Exciting and educational are adjectives that describe this past week. We have gone further in our study of adjectives. The students have been working on describing nouns. The students have used various types of organizers and tools to work with adjectives. We took the opportunity to introduce synonyms to the students and they practiced this skill by brainstorming synonyms of adjectives we have used to describe nouns.

During Writer’s Workshop we have been working with fiction stories. This week we took a different approach to writing our stories. Instead of developing new characters for their writing, the students wrote pieces that featured themselves as the main character. The students either used blank paper to write the stories about themselves, or took paper that had a prompt for the students to work off of for inspiration. For example, some of the students finished a prompt that started with, “If I were a firefighter…” Although the students started with the same prompt their stories were unique.

During Reading instruction we looked at different nursery rhymes and fairy tales. We read a few as a whole class, diagrammed the story elements, wrote reviews, and read with partners. This helped us with both our reading and writing practice.

Math has been focused on measuring using our bodies. At the beginning of the week we worked with partners to measure our bodies. At the end of the week we moved on to comparing lengths of various tapelines. The students measured the lines using kid steps and then decided which lines were bigger by looking at the data.

We also listened to a story about the Wright Brothers. The students learned information about the brothers and recorded what we learned. The Wright Brothers are especially connected to us, because they are also from Ohio (Dayton). They also owned a printing press and a bicycle shop. The students learned that the Wrights’ were persistent and tried many times to achieve their goal of flying their plane.

We are looking forward to March and all the exciting activities we have planned. We have a newspaper project, theater project, and a field trip to see a production of “Peter Pan”. Donuts with Dad or Special Friends is this month as well!