Welcome Back!

I hope that everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Spring Break :)

Here's a look at what's happening in our ELL groups:

Kindergarten: Our focus this week is on characters and setting. We will begin by analyzing different characters that we know of not just in books, but in tv shows and movies as well. After creating a list, we will be reading stories and drawing and identifying key information to describe characters. We also will identify different settings and understanding that settings are places described in stories. We will be drawing pictures and writing sentences to go along with our illustrations about characters and settings.

First Grade: We are continuing our human body explorations by identifying key vocabulary associated with the main organs in our body. Last week, we discussed the heart and now we are venturing into the lungs. We will be analyzing and reading various poems and short books that will help us describe key vocabulary words related to the lungs.

Second grade: We are describing various landforms that exist in our world! The students will be matching definitions to pictures and describing their knowledge of different landforms through actions.

Fifth Grade: We will continue our unit on Digestion and focus on the main organs and processes involved. We are reading different books and creating different diagrams that are related to digestion.

We're winding down the days until Spring Break!

 

All students did a wonderful job with ISATs this past week and we are now getting back into our normal routine.

 

Kindergarten students: We will be working on classfiying characteristics of objects such as heavy and light. We will also be incorporating some math skills into this by graphing our objects to see if there are more or less heavy objects than light objects.

 

First grade: We completed our autobiopoems and are now moving into analyzing the parts of the human body. We will begin this unit by doing various cooperative activities to analyze the parts inside and outside of the body and then move into the major functions of different organs.

 

 

Second grade: We are working on distinguishing facts and fiction. We will be doing different cooperative activities distinguishing the differences between fact and fiction beginning with a game where we choose 2 facts about ourselves and one fiction piece of information to try to fool our friends!

 

Fifth grade: We are moving into studying the parts and functions of the digestive system. We will be doing different cooperative activities and reading text related to the digestive system.

 

 

This week we have been working on many interesting activities that go along with topics discussed in each class!

Kindergarten is continuing their work on the letter O this week in class. We started off our groups brainstorming words that end in -op and created lists of words and sentences that have the ending. The rest of the week has been dedicated to brainstorming opposites. Each student wrote a sentence in their journal identifying an opposite and drawing a picture to go along with his or her writing using the frame ________ is the opposite of ___________.

First grade have been using their knowledge on biographies of other people to create an autobiographical poem about themselves! This activity will prepare them for answering the upcoming writing activity in their classes where they will be answering questions and interviewing a peer from class.

Second grade has been working hard to understand and describe the steps of the Scientific Method. Last week, we listened to a song about the Scientific Method and our groups created actions to go along with each step. These steps are: Make an observation, ask a question, form a hypothesis, do a test/experimentation, analyze data and record results, and draw a conclusion. We performed a sink/float experiment and focused on each step of the Scientific Method; using complete sentences to form predictions and ask questions in our journals.

Fifth grade has been working for the past few weeks on describing the events leading up to the Revolutionary War. We took a poll at the beginning using an interactive website called socrative.com, where the students responded to questions about the specific events to check their understanding. We are now working on a Reader's Theater to become engaged and take on roles of the various events to better our understanding!

Next week, our groups will not meet due to ISAT testing. We will resume our normal ELL schedule the following week!

Welcome back :)

We hope that you had a wonderful and relaxing winter break!

 

 

Tomorrow and Thursday we will be conducting CBMs for all grade levels, therefore our ELL groups will not be meeting for the remainder of the week.

 

Starting next Tuesday 1/15 until 2/15 we will be conducting ACCESS testing for all current ELL students and parent refusal students. We will be sending an informational letter home with your child later this week. During this testing window, we will not be meeting with our normal ELL groups due to the large number of students that require testing. Please feel free to contact us with any questions!

 

 

Miss Lundeen

Kindergartners picture sorting fruits and vegetables!

 

 

It's hard to believe that we only have 8 more days left of school until Winter Break!

Here's a look at this week's happenings in ELL:

One group of Kindergartners is working on communication exercises and practicing engaging in conversations describing characteristics about themselves. They are focusing on using eye contact, answering in complete sentences, and staying on topic.

Another group of Kindergarten ELL students is working on organizing foods into different food groups. This week's work was on sorting pictures and writing examples of fruits and vegetables. The students sorted pictures into categories, then used their journals to draw pictures and write sentences using the sentence frame A _________ is a fruit or A ________ is a vegetable.

First grade is working on writing details about holidays that they know of. We began our unit with a quick write about our favorite holidays and everything that we know that represents that holiday. We will continue by doing a picture sort with characteristics of various holidays and then doing another writing project where we will work on expanding on the details of a specific holiday.

Second grade is discussing healthy and un-healthy foods. Monday, we completed our Rally Robin activity identifying healthy and un-healthy foods and we will continue tomorrow by completing nutritious plates of food.

Third grade is working with Mrs. Howard on features of animal habitats and are utilizing vocabulary words such as adaptation, habitat, predator, prey and climate.

Fourth grade is working on features of the Southeast with Mrs. Krishnan.

Fifth graders are beginning a unit on Atoms. We will discuss the vocabulary protons, neutrons, nucleus and electrons before examining the periodic table of elements.

 

I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Thanksgiving break :)

 

Here's a look at what's going on in ELL this week:

 

Kindergarten: We are continuing to discuss our 5 senses and talk about what we can hear, see, touch, taste and smell while we are at school.

 

 

First Grade: We are discussing rhyming words. I have introduced my rhyming "brag bag" to the students and they have been guessing the special items in the bag by being given a rhyming clue to help them figure it out. We then did a listening activity where the students needed to respond to a clue and find the missing mittens based on the rhyming clues.

 

Second Grade: Mrs. Krishnan and I are reviewing the stories The Ugly Duckling and The Tortoise and the Hare  before the students go on their exciting field trip to view these plays on Thursday. We will be acting out a reader's theater of these plays in our ELL group tomorrow afternoon so that they have a good background knowledge of what the stories are about.

 

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard is continuing their discussion on our government and identifying various characteristics of government using picture sorting and allowing the students to have a meaningful discussion.

 

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan is continuing to cover rocks and minerals topics within their science unit in her small group of ELL students.

 

Fifth Grade: We are working on describing life in the original 13 colonies and comparing it to life today. I have provided links on the side of my blog to further examine what life was like during this time.

 

 

As always, please contact us with any questions!

 

Miss Lundeen