The HTmNC middle school students came to visit us this week. After sharing their story inspired decorated pumpkin, we decided it would be wonderful to have them work together once every two weeks for a special activity. This week, we gathered together to buddy read together. The middle school students read a book to our first graders first, then the first graders chose a book to read to their middle school buddies. It was a great time to build new learning experiences with new friends.
We started talking about long vowel sounds. Long vowel sounds make the same sound as the name of the letters: a, e, i, o, and u. Students learned that the letter 'y' takes the long vowel sound of 'i' or 'e' depending on the word. Similar to last week's activity of finding short vowel words related to flight, this week we brainstormed long vowel words related to flight, such as eagle, flight, beak, fly and more. We included a long vowel sort in one of the reading workshop activities to continue practicing them.
Before heading to break, students thought about what they were thankful for. Many students shared they were thankful for their family, friends and school. Some students shared they were thankful for projects, teachers, books, video games, and toys! After brainstorming what they were thankful for, students engaged in a turkey making craft and some students wrote what they were thankful for on the feathers. Students also read an article on wild turkeys. Then they differentiated short vowel and long vowel words within the article by highlighting and recording.
Math
Students continued to study the ruler, using both the centimeter and inch side. They took various classroom materials to measure the lengths using the ruler. They continued to solve word problems using two colored unifix cubes. They wrote a number sentence that matched the story, solved the number sentence using tools, then illustrated the results. Students worked on both join result unknown and separate result unknown problem types.