The Lebanon Lantern The Lebanon Lantern Winter 2019 final | Page 8

through stations that focused on one of the 5 senses. Each student got to pick a dinosaur egg to put in water and
observe it throughout the week, and each day we drew a picture to record what the egg looked like. The students
showed a lot of respect and caring this fall. We continue to make our way through the alphabet and numbers. This
winter we will learn about winter, snow animals and being our community helpers unit, we hope to have a few
community helpers visit our classroom!
Kindergarten
We read and compared different versions of well-known fairy tales, such as “Goldilocks and The Three
Dinosaurs”, and “The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot”. The children learned the components of what
makes a fairy tale and enjoyed the fractured fairy tales. We even were able to watch a reader's theater presentation
of 1st grades fairy tales.
We discussed ways we are thankful during the month of November, in honor of Thanksgiving. We learned about
the first Thanksgiving, wrote daily in our "Thankful Journals," and had a Charlie Brown Thanksgiving feast with
our 6th grade buddies. The kindergartners love spending time with our 6th grade buddies!
Of course, we are also busy becoming better readers and writers! The children are so impressed with themselves
at the amount that they can read and write! We are becoming experts at identifying fiction from non-fiction. In
writing, we learned that a sentence always starts with a capital letter and spaceman needs to be between all of our
words. We have begun to write 1-2 sentences in our morning journals.
In Math, we are learning the numbers 0-10, comparing numbers to 10, and exploring addition of numbers 0-5.
We have also begun creating paper gingerbread pen pals to send to 24 kindergarten classrooms around the United
States. Next week we will mail out our Gingerbread friends to our pen pals. We look forward to comparing and
contrasting the differences between our school and others, and learning about different parts of the United States
in the process.
First Grade
We are so excited about the many fun things to learn and explore this winter! We wrapped up our Fairy Tale unit.
The Kindergarten class was a great audience as we performed three separate Reader’s Theatre performances for
them! We recently began our second unit in our Reading Street program, where we have read a variety of
nonfiction and realistic fiction texts about animals and Science topics. During guided reading and reader’s
workshop, we are working on our word attack skills and comprehension. We will continue to work on our reading
fluency by rereading text, reading with appropriate expression, and practicing our weekly poems. The students
are very excited to begin Writer’s Workshop, where we will still use a three-step process to write personal
narratives, friendly letters, how-to books and other various writing pieces throughout the year.
In math, we completed our unit on adding and the students are learning how to use pictures and models to solve
subtraction word problems. In December, we revisited addition strategies. The students apply strategies like
doubles, doubles plus one, and doubles minus one to solve problems. In January, we will learn about the
relationship between addition and subtraction.
The students really enjoyed our Science unit on Plant and Animal Superpowers! We have discovered why
different birds have different beaks, that we inherit physical qualities from our parents, why ducks follow their
mothers, and what sunflowers do when we are not looking. In December, we conducted our Holidays Around the
World Unit, where the students learned about different holidays and traditions in other countries. We “visited”
Uganda, Israel, China, India, Jordan, Mexico, France, Italy, Germany, and England. In January, we will begin our
Science unit on the “Spinning Sky”. The students will develop the idea that the sun, moon and stars change
position in the sky.
Second Grade
We are currently working on a unit all about working together. They read stories about animals working together to help
each other and people. They read a story about Abraham Lincoln and discussed ways they he worked to help our country.
They have also been reading and listening to stories about friendship and helping others to build social skills and to
encourage empathy and kindness. In December, our character trait is caring. We will discuss ways that we can help others
in need. The class is working on writing a biography about a person of their choice. They read a book on their level about
that person. They took notes and then began writing their biography. They are currently working to create a final draft and
a drawing. Their next writing assignment will be an expository writing about a problem that they worked through with
others. In math, the class has been learning many strategies for adding 2-digit numbers. They completed their chapter on
basic facts and relationships. We will continue to learn more strategies including regrouping to add. Our next few chapters