Friday, February 28, 2020

What We Have Been Learning

It’s hard to believe that today is the last school day in February. As we move into a new month, we wanted to recognize the amazing students and staff who worked tirelessly throughout February to celebrate Black History Month at the Curley. Yesterday all that hard work culminated in the annual Black History Performance, featuring many of our former first-graders.

Check out some photos and video below!

     
     

Reader's Workshop

In Reader’s Workshop this week we continued reading and learning about the resources in our communities. We've been specifically thinking about our Weekly Question: "Where do our resources come from?" and the systems that exist that allow resources that are produced in one area of the world are able to be consumed in another area. they have that allows them to thrive and be successful in their habitat.


This week we read two main texts; From Cocoa Beans to Chocolate, and Me on the Map. In From Cocoa Beans to Chocolate, we focused on retelling the key steps in the chocolate making process and using key vocabulary from the text to explain why cocoa beans are grown in warm climates. Then, we read Me on the Map to help us get a better sense of where we live, and where we are in relation to the many places around the world where our resources come from.


Next week, we will use the text From Sheep to Sweater to think about the supply chains that bring goods to markets and and the importance of workers in the process of making yarn.

Buddy Study

This week kicked off the start of Buddy Study! In Buddy Study, students will be working with a partner to practice making and breaking apart new words. Students have four words to learn throughout a week of Buddy Study: two sight words are assigned, but students select their other words from our weekly word study on words with short-e and short-i sounds.

Be sure to ask your student what their words are!

This Week's Weekly Words:

  • natural resource: a material that exists in nature
  • industry: all the people and processes involved in producing a good or service
  • local: belonging to the nearby area
  • global: relating to the whole world
  • rural: having to do with the countryside
  • interconnected: having the parts or people linked to each other

Next Week's Weekly Words:

  • supply chain: steps involved in producing and delivering goods
  • worker: someone who does a job
  • customer: a person who buys goods and services
  • harvest: the period of time when farmers collect plants for food
  • produce: to make
  • provide: to give, to supply

Writer's Workshop

In Writer’s workshop we are working on our Poetry Unity! Students have been working on recognizing rhymes and writing their own writing poems. We have also begun talking about descriptive sensory poems and how writers choose specific words to describe how something looks, feels, smells, tastes and sounds.


Next week students are learning that poets can write many different types of poems and that poets follow a process when they write a poem. Poets think of a topic, brainstorm many ideas, and decide what kind of poem it will be (sensory, rhyming, etc) before drafting, revising and publishing their poem. We will also be reading poems like I Love My Hair in order to think about how poems can be about people in preparation for writing biographical poems.

Math

In math this week students worked with problems about unknown change.  We have been working on understanding equivalence and also revisited how to know if a problem is true or false.

Science


In Science, students have had a chance to plant wheat grass seeds and observe and compare the various leaves and other plants in our school’s environment. We have been thinking about how plants are living organisms that need water, air, nutrients, light, and space to grow and how plants have different structures that function to help them survive and thrive in their environment.

Studios


In studios, the Drama and Library Studios have been combined as our classroom market starts to take shape. Students have been extending their thinking about suppliers and consumers and how people make exchanges to obtain the goods and services they need and want. Further, in art and buildings studios, children have been building neighborhoods that include market spaces while designing maps and signs signs that attract people to the goods being sold in their market.

Questions to ask your student!

  • What is a local industry in Boston? 
  • What happens in a rural place? 
  • What natural resources do we depend on?
  • Notice the signs around your neighborhood. 
    • What words and images do you see? 
    • What kinds of information do the signs give? 
    • Which signs make you interested in buying a good or a service?

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