Week 3 - New Games and New Jobs
/This has been a very full week for the Sea Lions! We introduced our classroom jobs and students got to fill out a “job application” to explain which jobs they would be most interested in and why they would be a good fit for those jobs. We took a few days to test out some of the different job roles, and then students were “hired” to their jobs. We are practicing being responsible and setting an example as leaders in the classroom as we fulfill our job duties. For our morning Word Work each day, we rotated through time spent working on grammar/editing mistakes in Ms. Susan’s writing, learning new vocabulary words about sea lions, learning and practicing cursive letters, and sorting words based on their spelling patterns. These Sea Lions seem to really like being challenged with difficult spelling words to practice!
During Writer’s Workshop today, each author shared their first published book (or books for some) with the rest of the class. We practiced being kind, attentive audience members, as well as giving compliments and helpful suggestions to each author after they read their stories.
We continue reviewing the books in our classroom library. The Sea Lions have done a great job of looking through books to decide if they are a good fit to keep on the shelves. Each time we go through a group of books, there are always one or two titles that catch a Sea Lion’s attention and get them excited to continue reading the whole book later. We like to take time to read independently from books of our choice too. Ms. Susan has been meeting with each student to listen to them read, so now she will be able to help them choose chapter books that will be a “just right” challenge for them.
We all love using our microscopes to get a closer look at the things we find around us. The Sea Lions explored looking at more items for nature, along with a strand of their hair, a ripped edge of paper, and other items from inside the classroom. We noticed some mushrooms growing in the grass outside, so we brought one in to investigate under the microscope. When we broke open the stem, we found that there were some strange white larvae creatures crawling out of the mushroom. It was an exciting discovery!
This week, we began a new unit to study sea lions. We have been building a list of questions we have about these animals, and we continue to add facts to the list each day as we learn new information. We read a book about seals, sea lions, and walruses and learned how they are all part of a group of animals called pinnipeds. We’ll keep researching more details about sea lions and then we plan to create a collaborative class book about them.
The Sea Lions worked really hard this week on their math lessons. We are practicing comparing large numbers up to the hundred thousands and learning how to round the numbers to different place values. Students are doing a great job of being willing to challenge themselves with their own personal level of work that will help stretch and grow their brains. We celebrated our hard work by spending Friday playing a variety of math games, which helped us review and solidify what we’ve learned as well as made math time fun!
We learned a new movement game this week called “Captain’s Orders.” We have really enjoyed playing this game during our brain breaks. You could ask your Sea Lion to show you how it’s played and see if they remember some of the movement commands. Several Sea Lions also spent most of the week playing the game of “Life” during our afternoon Project Exploration time. We continue to enjoy our outside choice time too. This week included some interesting zombie tag games, opening a pretend “massage shop”, and Henry showing the younger Otter students how to create a volcano with the sand and water pump. The Sea Lions seem to be building some nice friendships with our Otter friends, and we are so glad we get to expand our community to include them too.
