Week 31

We had a fun-packed week, in spite of STAAR testing. It is always difficult for our younger children to miss specials and recess while the older kids are testing. That is why we try to schedule field trips for these days. Here is what's happening in Mrs. Langham's class this week.

Our focus book of the week was Fish Faces. This nonfiction book was really funny too. We enjoyed looking at the different fish and we especially paid attention to the descriptive language the author was using to describe each fish. We are trying to use descriptive words in our poetry writing too. We have been working on line poems and acrostic poems during writer's workshop.

We had two letters we focused on this week, letter Xx with the help of Foxy Roxy and letter Vv with Victor the Vulture. Our sight words were "has" and "look". 

We integrated insects into language arts too. We are able to read these sight word books too.

We celebrated Earth Day by reading about how to take care of the Earth.

We read a book about where our garbage goes.

We talked about ways we can reduce, recycle and reuse. We practiced sorting things that can be recycled too.

We discussed ways that tires can be recycled and used for other things. Then we did an experiment. We put tires (Cheerios) in a landfill (cup) and we used a marker to see how much space they took up.

Then we reduced our tires by smashing them to make them more compact and take up less space.

We were able to see what a difference this made by comparing it to our original line.

Then we added more ingredients (plaster of Paris and water) to our tires (Cheerios) and reused our tires to make roads.

We recorded our experiment, just like scientists.

We had a great day at the Texas Memorial Museum. Thank you to all of our chaperones who helped escort the class through the museum. Also, thank you to those who provided a much needed snack. Here are just some of the fun things we saw.

We had fun playing in centers this week.

We retold the song/story of the Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly using a storyboard.

We retold the story by making our own books and putting them in order.

We wrapped up our plant unit by creating and labeling the parts of a plant.