January 13, 2020
Last week, we read The Three Cabritos together. It is the first of six books that have been nominated for The Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award. The other nominated books are When She Was Harriet, Interrupting Chicken, Flying Deep, Blue Sky White Stars, and I'm Trying to Love Spiders. We will read a book each week, then each student will vote for their favorite. At the end of the school year, students will discover which book wins the award. While reading The Three Cabritos, students compared the book to The Three Billy Goats Gruff and discussed whether or not the story would make a good video game. Students came up with creative ideas for a game where the object is to get a little goat across a bridge by using instruments as distractions.
We also read the following books to learn about music and sound:
The Story Orchestra, Four Seasons in One Day
Once Upon an Ordinary School Day
Oscar and the Bat, A Book About Sound
Barn Swallows also learned about nouns, adjectives, and verbs. They completed art projects to show the parts of the body that we use to perform different actions and labeled their drawings with verbs. To practice adjectives, they cut a hole in a paper to poke their face through and wrote adjectives to describe themselves.They will be drawing noun towns this week and will label their towns with nouns. Then, we will begin to do Mad Libs together once in a while so that they can practice nouns, adjectives and verbs.
In math, first graders worked on adding teen numbers to fifty, and played games to learn and reinforce their understanding of place value (understanding that the digits in a 2-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones). Second graders practiced adding 10 to a number that is off-decade and played a game called Star Power. They also practiced counting by 5s to 200. On Thursday, they completed part of a cumulative assessment.
On Thursday, we had an Out & About to the UCC where we met Geneva Houx who taught students about sound vibrations, the parts of our body that help us to speak and sing, and how instruments make sound. Students sang and played instruments. Then, we returned to school and experimented with sound. Barn Swallows dropped objects behind a cardboard divider while others tried to guess the object making the sound, played with tuning forks to move objects using sound vibrations, and used rubber bands and rules to create simple instruments and make modifications to them to alter the sounds that they made. At the end of week one, students know that sound is made by vibrating molecules, sound travels in waves, and sound is a form of energy. We will be studying sound for a few more weeks.
On Friday, Barn Swallows worked in groups to create a sound or signal for me to use to get their attention. They made posters to persuade others to vote for their sound. There were six groups who all decided on a call and response signal where I say a word and then they all respond with a word and stop what they're doing to listen. I'll use one idea each week for the next six weeks. Their ideas are:
Please email me if you have any questions or concerns, e.conway@fgcschool.org.
Last week, we read The Three Cabritos together. It is the first of six books that have been nominated for The Patricia Gallagher Picture Book Award. The other nominated books are When She Was Harriet, Interrupting Chicken, Flying Deep, Blue Sky White Stars, and I'm Trying to Love Spiders. We will read a book each week, then each student will vote for their favorite. At the end of the school year, students will discover which book wins the award. While reading The Three Cabritos, students compared the book to The Three Billy Goats Gruff and discussed whether or not the story would make a good video game. Students came up with creative ideas for a game where the object is to get a little goat across a bridge by using instruments as distractions.
We also read the following books to learn about music and sound:
The Story Orchestra, Four Seasons in One Day
Once Upon an Ordinary School Day
Oscar and the Bat, A Book About Sound
Barn Swallows also learned about nouns, adjectives, and verbs. They completed art projects to show the parts of the body that we use to perform different actions and labeled their drawings with verbs. To practice adjectives, they cut a hole in a paper to poke their face through and wrote adjectives to describe themselves.They will be drawing noun towns this week and will label their towns with nouns. Then, we will begin to do Mad Libs together once in a while so that they can practice nouns, adjectives and verbs.
In math, first graders worked on adding teen numbers to fifty, and played games to learn and reinforce their understanding of place value (understanding that the digits in a 2-digit number represent amounts of tens and ones). Second graders practiced adding 10 to a number that is off-decade and played a game called Star Power. They also practiced counting by 5s to 200. On Thursday, they completed part of a cumulative assessment.
On Thursday, we had an Out & About to the UCC where we met Geneva Houx who taught students about sound vibrations, the parts of our body that help us to speak and sing, and how instruments make sound. Students sang and played instruments. Then, we returned to school and experimented with sound. Barn Swallows dropped objects behind a cardboard divider while others tried to guess the object making the sound, played with tuning forks to move objects using sound vibrations, and used rubber bands and rules to create simple instruments and make modifications to them to alter the sounds that they made. At the end of week one, students know that sound is made by vibrating molecules, sound travels in waves, and sound is a form of energy. We will be studying sound for a few more weeks.
On Friday, Barn Swallows worked in groups to create a sound or signal for me to use to get their attention. They made posters to persuade others to vote for their sound. There were six groups who all decided on a call and response signal where I say a word and then they all respond with a word and stop what they're doing to listen. I'll use one idea each week for the next six weeks. Their ideas are:
- Teacher: "Storm Troopers" Students: "Advance"
- Teacher: "Ducky" Students: "Quack"
- Teacher: "Give Me Your Hands" Students: hold up their hands
- Teacher: "Yo" Students: "da" (Yoda)
- Teacher: "Harry" Students: "Potter"
- Teacher: "Cats and..." Students: "Dogs"
Please email me if you have any questions or concerns, e.conway@fgcschool.org.
