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 

 

 

We are working hard leading up to our final week before Thanksgiving Break!

 

 

Here's a look at what our ELL groups have been up to:

 

Kindergarten: We are continuing to examine our five senses and have spent this week working on our sense of hearing and explaining to each other different sounds that we can hear with our ears. We also have sorted sounds that are loud and others that are quiet. We will continue the rest of the week working on the sense of touch and describing how objects feel.

 

First grade: We are beginning to align our unit with the Science curriculum studying rocks. This week's focus is looking at the word texture! The students began the unit completing an individual quick write describing all facts that they know about rocks. We then used a texture box to examine examples of words to describe how rocks feel; smooth, hard, soft, rough, sticky, etc. Based off of this list, the first graders identified words that did not represent the word texture such as shiny, sparkly, colored, etc. They are bringing home a completed Frayer Model vocabulary page to display their new knowledge of this word!

 

Second Grade: We have been analyzing the word history and identifying words that belong and do not belong in that topic. We also looked at timelines and identified the essential elements of what belongs on a timeline and ended by creating timelines of our own lives!

 

Third Grade: Mrs. Howard is continuing to discuss government with the third graders and they have been focusing on the three branches of government.

 

Fourth Grade: Mrs. Krishnan has been working with the fourth graders on activities to further examine the effects of water and erosion on rocks.

 

Fifth Grade: We are working on comparing different colonies and identifying various traits of the 13 colonies. We will continue to compare and contrast Puritans and Pilgrims.

 

 

Parent/Teacher conferences are this week!

 

We are going to attempt to attend as many conferences as possible, however, if you wish to meet with either Mrs. Howard, Mrs. Krishnan or Miss Lundeen to discuss the ELL program or your child's progress, please feel free to contact us to set up a time to meet.

 

There are a few time blocks where we do not have any conferences scheduled, so feel free to stop by the ELL room (107) to speak with us.

 

 

First Graders are working hard on their animal description writing! The students completed writing pieces this week about their favorite animal and described in detail how they look, sound, and move. Each student completed a detailed graphic organizer and used that to fill in sentence frames about their animals such as A _______ makes a _________ sound that reminds me of __________. (EX: An elephant makes a trumpeting sound with their trunk that reminds me of a musical instrument in a band.) They used these sentence frames to complete a final piece of writing in their journals about their chosen animal.