Tomie dePaola

We are currently knee deep in our Tomie dePaola Author Study. We are studying his books and have created an attribute chart as a home for our findings for author's craft, noticings, theme, plot, movement through time, genre, and vocabulary. We decided to write Tomie dePaola and today received a letter back from him! The answers to our questions were posted on his blog! You can check it out on his blog under the heading, "The Chets Creek Elementary School Farmers:"
Tomie dePaola's Blog

Kiss A Pig

Thank you to everyone who came to our third nine weeks award ceremony. One of the best parts of our job is seeing how proud students are of their accomplishments. They certainly had a reason to be proud, they have made great gains thus far. As a reward for meeting their reading goal this nine weeks, students went to a picnic lunch on Friday with Principal Phillips and watched her KISS A PIG! Below is a video of the exciting event:


We are looking forward to what the last nine weeks will bring!

Mrs. Robert's Baby Shower

There is still six weeks before Olivia is scheduled to make her appearance, but we are definitely looking forward to it! The students have been anxiously preparing for Mrs. Robert's Baby Shower for several weeks and the day finally arrived Friday. She was definitely surprised to find the classroom and all of our students in pink, black, and zebra print! We started the morning by watching her open our class gift (a book of "mommy advice")and some other presents. Students then participated in baby stations (name the animal babies, making a baby out of playdough, baby pictionary, etc.) to get the full Baby Shower experience. We ended the shower with cake! Thank you to the Skipper family for providing the beautiful zebra themed cake. We had a great day! Thank you to our wonderful students and families for making the day so special! Enjoy the pictures!

Zoo Field Trip

We had a great time at the zoo! In class, we have been looking at informational texts, researching and writing about an animal, and learning about the basic needs of living organisms. The students were habitat experts when they went to the educational class provided by the zoo. Look for our nonfiction reports on our Standards Based Bulletin Board and the student clips located outside our classroom!

Butterflies

We released our butterflies this afternoon into their natural habitat. The students have become butterfly "experts" and were able to answer questions from our Kindergarten observers. Ask your child about their experience and what they have learned!

Life Cycles

What better way to learn about life cycles than to experience it? Two weeks ago we received our caterpillars. Since, we have experienced molting, spinning, and finally the next life cyle stage: the chrysalis. With the help of Mrs. Virata, we transferred all 35 chrysalises into the butterfly net. We will be anxiously awaiting our Painted Lady butterflies!

Informing Others

As part of our Non-Fiction unit, students explored books to recognize non-fiction conventions (labels, captions, index, etc.) as well as learn the difference between a sorted and narrative non-fiction text. Today students participated in a scavenger hunt that allowed them to explore the features of a non-fiction text as well as to help students recognize if they know where to find the features in the book.

One of our Second Grade Writing Standards states that students will be able to communicate big ideas, insights or theories that have been elaborated on or illustrated through facts, details, quotations, statistics and information. To work towards this standard, we have begun researching our topics for report writing. Students have chosen topics that they know little about and are in the process of organizing factual information they have found on their topic. Students will be allowed to search on safe sites such as the ones added to the "Student Links" on the right side of our blog.