Ms. Vanderwel's Room

Hello and Happy Friday! Here's a peek at our week. This week the students began creating a story about an insect that gets lost and can't find it's way back home. Students outlined the details of their story in their journals and then used loose parts (e.g. blocks, popsicle sticks, other small objects) to build the setting of and orally tell their story to a partner. After creating their story using loose parts, students began storyboarding the parts of their story using illustrations. Next week, students will begin drafting the rough copy of their stories.  In math, students continued to develop their understanding of graphing. This week they learned about bar graphs and line or dot plots. Students learned how these graphs are similar to and different from pictographs and why you might use one type of graph over another.  In social studies, we began to look at the different groups that we belong to such as our family, classroom, school and teams. We discussed how the indiv...

In Language Arts, we listened to a variety of stories and practiced identifying important story elements. Students learned how to recognize the characters, setting, problem, and other key parts of a story. After each story, students reflected on what they had learned and recorded their thinking in their journals. This helped students strengthen both their reading comprehension and writing skills. In Math, we continued our learning about graphs. This week, students explored how graphs can help us answer questions and draw conclusions. They practiced "reading" graphs by looking carefully at the information presented and determining what the data was telling them. Students worked on comparing quantities, identifying the most and least common responses, and using graph information to answer questions. In Science, we learned about litter and pollution. Students discussed the difference between the two and explored how human actions can impact the environment. We talked about the 4...

This week in Language Arts, students began taking a closer look at the features of fiction books. We learned that fiction stories have three main parts: a beginning, middle, and end. Students were also introduced to important story elements including characters, setting, events, and solution. To help build their understanding, students watched several short videos explaining the different parts and elements of a fiction story.   Video Link After listening to the classic story The Three Little Pigs , students worked together in small groups to identify and organize the story elements. They discussed the characters, setting, important events, and the solution to the problem in the story. Students then plotted these elements in the correct order under the beginning, middle, and end sections of the story. This activity encouraged teamwork, discussion, and deeper thinking about how stories are organized. In Math, we began discussing the concept of graphing. Students learned that graphs ...