Happy Halloween Week!

 



This week, we are doing many engaging and cooperative activities in our ELL groups.

Kindergarten: We are focusing on describing direction words and using pumpkins to explain where you can put it in the classroom. We will be working on on, in, in-between, next to, under/below. The students will be describing to a partner where they put the pumpkin in the room using the following frame: The pumpkin is __________ the table. They will have an opportunity to write the sentence as well.

First grade: We are continuing our writing samples on describing animals and objects. We are using a four square organizer where they are describing what an animal looks like, sounds like, how it moves and how we feel when we see the animal.

Second grade: We are working in cooperative groups on problem solving! Last week, the students read the book Each orange had 8 slices by Paul Giganti, Jr. and did the cooperative activity Rally Coach to guide each other through the problem solving steps to come up with a correct answer to each problem. Each partner described the steps they took to his or her coaching partner. This week, we are in those same cooperative groups studying a set of objects and identifying appropriate words that can be used to create number stories with a connecting number sentence.

Third and fourth graders are continuing to do interesting and engaging activities related to science and social studies with Mrs. Krishnan and Mrs. Howard!

Fifth grade: We will continue the colony unit from Social studies beginning by comparing and contrasting Roanoke and Jamestown. We will continue throughout the week to look at the Puritans and Pilgrims and incorporating a jigsaw activity to study these two groups further in depth.

As always, please feel free to contact us if there are any questions!

Miss Lundeen

This week has been fairly short in ELL due to our half day on Wednesday and the upcoming first grade field trip to the zoo on Friday. Here is a look at what we have been working on in our ELL groups so far this week:

Kindergarten: Miss Lundeen is going into the Kindergarten classrooms and working on rhyming activities. Today we looked at my rhyming "brag bag" and guess special items in the bag using rhyming words. Then, we completed a listening activity where we followed directions and colored items on a page that went along with appropriate rhyming words. Our sentence frame that we are working on is "________ rhymes with _________" and filling it in appropriately.

Flex groups for Kindergarten are working on identifying letter sounds and blending them together to form sounds. We are also practicing words that have similar endings and are identifying why certain words don't belong in a word family. EX: Cat and bat come from the -at family. Net and Set cannot belong in the family since they do not end in -et.

First grade: Completed our weather unit and used the cooperative structure "Mix, pair, share" to share our excellent writing with each other. Since first graders are heading to the zoo, today we made predictions of what we might hear, see, smell, or touch at the zoo tomorrow. The ideas that the students came up with were very creative such as "I might hear an elephant stomping his feet". I look forward to hearing if their predictions are correct :).

Second grade: We will be looking at problems to solve and analyzing the sentence structures to determine the correct steps needed to solve a problem. Our group will be working on this throughout next week and will eventually create their own math story problem to present to a different group of students.

Third grade: Last week, the third graders completed a creative writing activity where they wrote their own scary story. Each student had an opportunity to share his or her story around a "campfire" to the rest of the peers. The students completed bones and muscles this week working with Mrs. Howard and did various activities relating to the vocabulary involved within this unit.

Fourth grade: The fourth graders are working with Mrs. Krishnan on identifying vocabulary words related to natural resources, government, economy, history, etc. and were justifying their ideas in a small group.

Fifth grade: Fifth grade students are working on creating colonies in their Language Arts blocks. The students have come up with very creative ideas to create individual colonies with a unique climate, government, and other features.

Please contact us if there are any questions!

Miss Lundeen, Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Krishnan

We are officially into the month of October :)

 

Here is a look at what our ELL students have been doing:

Kindergarten: We finished identifying the colors of various objects and we practiced counting numbers and identifying what numbers come before a number and after a number. This past week, our small group of ELL students has been reviewing our letters and sounds and identifying words that have a particular letter in them. We did a project where the students matched letters, words and pictures and we worked on partner reading.

First Grade: We have identified different weather patterns and practiced writing the weather words and matching the words to pictures. Our next topic will be connecting the four different seasons to weather patterns using the following sentence frame: In the _______________ the weather is ______________. Next week, the students will be writing about different aspects of a chosen season.

Second Grade: Mrs. Krishnan will begin to work with groups from 2W and 2BR while Miss Lundeen will work will our students from 2C in the morning. 2C completed our investigation of the word greater and now we are working on comparing even and odd numbers. We finished the week by creating question clues to try and have the members of our group guess their magic even or odd number! Many students were extremely creative and invented number stories to convey their magic number.

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard has been reviewing the bones and muscles vocabulary with our third grade ELL groups.

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan has been working with our fourth grade students on describing themselves and communicating effectively with their peers. The students also looked at vocabulary introducing social studies topics such as natural resources, economy, geography, etc.

Fifth Grade: The fifth grade ELL students completed their writers workshop activity and did a fantastic job putting a story that they created into a unique comic! They are sharing the comic book with their group in their classes this week.

We have two Kid-to-Kid students from Metea Valley that are coming to May Watts to work with our students :) They will be coming in the afternoon on either Monday or Wednesday to work with and observe our students.

Next week will begin the district Interim Assessments for students in grades 2-5. ELL students that are levels 1-3 will not be required to take the interim assessments at this time.

 

As always, please contact us with any questions!

 

Miss Lundeen, Mrs. Krishnan and Mrs. Howard