House of ING

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  Today our classroom was transformed into the "House of ING."  We used the Chinese New Year to enhance our learnING.  We did lots for learning about Chinese New Year.  For instance, we watched a Reading Rainbow video on the Chinese New Year and read a wonderful book called Goldy Luck and the Three Pandas.  Go to the Reading Rainbow link on the top button bar if you would like to check out these wonderful resources.

 
Our morning work was learning to write the numbers 1-10 in Chinese characters.  Then the students completed a dragon dot to dot written with Chinese numbers.  Students even opened the app Sum Stacker and used Chinese numbers to solve addition puzzles.



We also filled in a message with tons of missing INGs!  Perfect for the residence in the "House of ING."  We became ING ending experts.  We discussed the different phonics rules about adding the ing ending to a root word.  For example, if there is a short vowel and single consonant you have to double the consonant before adding the ing.  Also, if there is a silent e, you have to drop the e before adding ing.  Isn't English spelling complex!



One my favorite activities today was spelling.  The students practiced adding ING to words with the added challenge of chopsticks.  We had Chinese take out boxes filled with words.  The children had to use chopsticks to pull out a word.  They read the word and added -ING.  Next, the students glued the word with -ING to the paper plate and read the new word.  Sometimes, students had to double a consonant, sometimes they had to drop an e, and sometimes they could leave the root word and simply add ing.  They worked so hard at the reading and spelling until their plates were full!

As we read fiction stories and nonfiction articles about Chinese New Year, we learned that one tradition is to clean out your house before the new year begins.  We did a thorough desk cleaning and washing.

 
In math, we used Chinese tangram puzzles to make animals.  Tangrams are seven flat shapes that are arranged to make pictures. We used the Osmo to guide our geometrical creations.  Look at that concentration.

It was a terrific day in the House of ING.  Students earned a coin for luck and happiness at the end of the day.

Inference Investigators

     To work on the reading comprehension strategy of inferring, the Connected Combo students became investigators this week. To infer in reading, you have to use your schema (your background knowledge) and the clues the author gives you to infer things that might not be written on the page. We read a story about Tim and his grandma. Tim and his grandma were spending a snowy day together while Tim's mom went to work. When she came home at 4 o'clock, Tim and Grandma were no where to be found. However, they left many clues about what they had been up to during their "snow day."   As inference investigators, each group of students got an envelope with some of the evidence Tim's mom collected. As a group, the investigators went through their envelopes. They would write down the piece of evidence and then infer what Tim and his grandma might have been doing. For example, one group had a McDonald's french fry container, so they inferred that Tim and Grandma had McDonald's for lunch.



Some of the evidence was tricky.  The investigators really had to think.  For example, one group had a wrapper and some of the group members inferred that Tim and Grandma had a cupcake for snack while the other investigators in the group thought maybe they ate muffins for breakfast.  Great ideas, both could be correct.  Later, the group found a recipe for muffins and decided the wrapper was in fact from blueberry muffins!  The groups did a nice job collaborating before they wrote down their inferences. Teamwork!

The investigators used the evidence to figure out many of the activities that Tim and his grandma did all day.  They still had a question to answer, where were Tim and grandma at 4 o'clock when his mom came home.  The groups all got together and discussed all their findings.  They were able to make a timeline of the day.  One group had a movie schedule with the 4 o'clock showtime for Frozen circled.  That was it!  Great job inference investigators! 

Royal Readers

 The children were so excited to find out who would be crowned our first Raz Reading King and Queen.  I had been tracking our reading minutes on Raz Kids all week.  WOW!  The students really worked hard!  Amazing!!!!  However, there could only be two royals.  This week, the top readers were both young men....so we had a king and prince.  Our prince read over 4 hours and the king logged more than six hours.  Drum roll please.....

 Our royal readers get a crown and a reading scepter.  They get to lead our line everywhere we go and they make a special visit to the principal's office.  While our royals are very special, there was also other great reading achievements to recognize.  There were 9 other children that read over 60 minutes this week on RAZ.  For being so bright, these students got a glow bracelet.  I think our first crowning  really inspired some more reading!   Plus, the girls weren't going to be shut out of the crowns again! For our second crowning, we had a king and queen!  Awesome job!



Congratulations readers!  Our next crowning will be Friday, February 3rd.  Read, read, read!  Thank you for your tremendous support with both RAZ and book-a-night.  Your support at home is crucial!  Reading at home makes and incredible impact on your child's learning. 

 

Sweet Send Off

We will greatly miss our friend!  The Connected Combo is a  family, we are so sad to say good-bye to one of our own!  We wish Aiden and his family all the best on their next adventure.  The students wanted to give him a good-bye party.  So sweet.  We all wore bunny ears, his favorite animal!  One student planned and led games like pin a sticker on Colorado and Denver Zoo Bingo.  Aiden brought cupcakes to share.  Last, we gave him the snail mail kit.  Thank you all for the great contributions.  We will certainly stay in touch.

Animal Adaptations

In science we have been studying animal adaptations.  We learned adaptations are tools animals have to help them thrive and survive in their habitat.  Animals have adaptations to help them with camouflage, protection, locomotion, temperature, and getting food.  In addition to research we have done a couple experiments to help illustrate different adaptations.



One experiment demonstrated how camouflage helps animals avoid predators.  In the experiment, we placed two different types of cut out butterflies on a patterned paper.  Some of the cut-outs had the same pattern of the paper and the others were solid colored.  The students had 20 seconds to pick up as many butterflies as possible.  The students found that it was way easier to pick up the solid butterflies because they were more visible.  Thus, they concluded that the camouflage protects the butterflies from predators.



A second experiment was designed to show how different bird beaks are better adapted for different types of food.  In this demonstration, students performed twenty second time trials.  In each trial the students used different "beaks" which were tweezers, a spoon, and a clothespin.  The students had to use the beak to collect certain foods.  The foods were marbles, straws, and toothpicks.  The data that the students collected showed which beak was best adapted for which type of food.  Then, we made conclusions about what real life bird beaks this experiment represented.  For instance, the spoon represented a pelican beak and the marbles were fish.



We also had the wonderful opportunity to have ZooMontana present to our students.  All the first and second grade teachers pooled our carnival earnings from last year to bring the ZooMontana educational outreach program to Eagle Cliffs.  It was awesome!  The children loved learning about the adaptations and then actually seeing the animals.  We saw hissing cockroaches, a possum, an owl, and a HUGE snake.  The students even were allowed to pet the snake!  Ahhh!

See if your child can share his/her learning about animal adaptations.  Click here for a wonderful interactive websites and games about animal adaptations.  Also, check out the padlet below that the children commented on after the zoo presentation.