This week we focused on firefighters and police officers. We had a fire drill, talked about how firefighters and police officers help the community, had a visit from real firefighters and police officers, discussed why there are laws, and read about firefighters in our Weekly Reader.

We also had an optometrist, a radiologist, and a pilot come into our classroom. They told us about their jobs, showed us pictures, and answered our questions about their careers. We are looking forward to learning next week from our community helpers that are coming in to share their professions with us.

In Writer’s Workshop we all worked on our small moment stories. We took a small moment that happened in our lives, something like brushing our teeth, and stretched it out so we had a story detailing the event. We used booklets to tell the story of the small moments. The students were able to stretch the story out over many pages. We learned that stories are more interesting when they have more details.

In Math Workshop we worked with Inventory Bags. Each student was paired with a classmate. The pairs were given a bag containing a manipulative. The students learned that their task was to take inventory of the bag. We discussed that stores take inventory of their stock by counting how much of each item they have. The students and their partners each counted the contents of the bag—they decided they should double-check their partner’s answer to make sure the inventory of the items was correct. After they agreed on the number for the inventory they wrote how many and then drew the manipulative to visually represent the inventory.

Measurement is the next topic in our Math Workshop. We started our investigation by measuring with unifix cubes. Each student connected ten unifix cubes together—these were their measuring sticks. The students explored the classroom to find objects that were longer and shorter than their unifix stick. The recording sheet had two sections for the students to record. On one side the students would draw objects that were shorter than the unifix cubes, and on the other side the students drew objects that were longer than the connected unifix cubes.

Next week we will wrap up our theme on community helpers. We will segue into a theme about the election. The students will learn about national symbols, local government, voting, and the three branches of government.

Thank you to all our community helper presenters. The students were very interested to see the images and hear the information.

Please remember to sign up on the board outside the classroom for the Pembroke Halloween Open House Trick or Treat celebration that is on October 26th from 5-7.

Have a great weekend!