Month: September 2014

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Measurement and “Who We Are”…

measurementWhat did we learn about measurement…

  •  We measured people and we measured other objects.
  • Objects and people can be different sizes.
  • We always have to check twice after we measured.
  • We always need to measure from one end to the other end.
  • We always need to count slowly when you finished.
  • Take your time to measure.
  • The things that you are measuring with has to be the same.
  • We can use objects like crayons, cubes, links, plastic foots, paper, books, markers, erasers etc. to measure other larger objects.
  • We can use everything to measure.
  • WE HAVE FUN MEASRUING STUFFS…

Unit of Inquiry – Who We Are

Students finished sharing their “About Me” box.  Thank you for helping them with this project.  They did a great job sharing and showing who they are and how they are unique.  kaymbu-image-20140925-1117We discussed in depth about what feelings we have and how to express them.  Students applied their writing skills to create their “My Feelings” Book.  This process increases their awareness of their emotions.  It laid a good foundation for helping students find appropriate ways to express themselves.

 

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Forest Walk

We went to our first forest walk at the Pokrovsky Forest.  We collected lots of big sticks. We made a “Nature Collage” in the hallway.  We saw different kinds of flowers and trees.  We saw a pond with ducks swimming in there.  We found the beaver’s house with something fluffy and white on it. There were many leaves covering it too.   We walked up and down the stairs when we went to the beaver’s house.  The stairs were near the beaver’s house.  We saw holes near the beaver’s house.  We wondered if that’s how the beaver gets into his house or how the beaver gets into the water.  We also saw lots and lots of green grass and brown leaves on the ground.  The leaves must be falling down from the trees.  We saw mushrooms as well.  We wondered if they are poisonous or not.  We enjoyed our forest walk because we like Autumn.

KZE writers: Kyle, Fatima, Michael, Emerson, Liam, Charlie, Max, Lizzy, Trace, Lisa, Hannes, Freddie, Daisy, Scarlett, Safiya, and Mrs. Zurfluh

 

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Strategies…

KZE students created this post during share writing time in the classroom this morning.  Here is what we did:

  • We sorted people
  • For example, we all sat on the carpet.  We picked people to go to the middle.  And the other people tried to guess what strategy we were using
  • We sorted by hair colors
  • We sorted by shoe colors
  • We sorted by red clothes
  • I learned that we need to raise our hands when we have something to say
  • I learned how to sort people and stuff by saying what they look like, and put them together
  • Most important thing we learned was that we can sort by using different strategies.

We revised our writing, and added more details.  We decided to add our names.  We hope you enjoyed our post.

KZE writers: Kyle, Michael, Emerson, Liam, Max, Daisy, Scarlett, Fatima, Charlie, Lizzy, Lisa, Trace, Hannes, Safiya, and Freddie

 

 

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Sorting and Inquiry – How the World Works!

The KZE explorers had a busy week.

In Math, students had a chance to explore/play with many different kinds of buttons.  They needed to describe the buttons with words such as “red,” “little,” “2 holes,” “smooth,” etc.  They were asked to sort buttons into groups according to these terms. sorting This is a  foundational math skill that helps students to identify common attributes and begin to see different ways to match and sort objects.  In essence, it is a methodology for making sense of key mathematical understanding.

Similarly, during the introduction to our year long unit of  “How the World Works”, students were given a picture of people riding bicycles and another picture of a single bicycle wheel.  They used a visible thinking strategy titled “I See, I think, I wonder…” to describe what they observed.

Here are the highlight of our conversation:

  • “I see a wheel, it is a bicycle wheel”
  • “it is round, it is a circle”
  • “what did you notice about the circle?”cycle discussion
  • “it goes around and around and around”
  • “it is a cycle”
  • “what is a cycle?”
  • “a cycle can be a circle”
  • “a cycle can be a rectangle, or a triangle.  as long as it doesn’t end”
  • “it is repeating”
  • “can you think of anything that can be called a cycle?”
  • “the weather”
  • “recess”
  • “writing”
  • “the earth rotating”
  • “the class schedule”, “the day of the week”, “and the month of the year”

Through the conversation, students made a leap from our picture to a basic understanding of the concept of a cycle.  We were able to make connections to their daily experiences and, like in math, formed a core concept that will serve our ongoing theme of how things work.

 

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Math – graphing

graphing

 The concept of basic graphing was introduced.  Students used data on eye color, hair color, and the number of letters in their names to create bar graphs.  They now have a basic knowledge of how to describe information on the graph.

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We are Writers…

We are writersDuring Writer’s Workshop, we learned that writers sometimes close their eyes to picture an idea that they want to write about, and this helps them to include more details in their pictures and through their words. We also practiced saying words slowly and writing down the sounds that we hear. Students tried very hard to apply these skills when they wrote their “I Like” book.

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Share reading…

After reading the story of “Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?” by Eric Carle, we made our own classroom book “Children, Children, Who Do You See?” They had fun chanting the sentences with their friend’s names inserted into the chant.