Banyan Newsletter
May 21, 2010
Reading Workshop: Fluency
Banyan students are learning to read with fluency. They are pausing at periods and commas, changing their voices when they read a question or see quotation marks and when they see varied print types. We have been practicing these skills and recording our voices to hear the fluency.
Social Smarts
something. Try making some smart guesses and wacky guesses at home!
We introduced the last few unthinkables. •Was Funny Once: He makes you use humor at inappropriate times. •Energy Hare-y: a rabbit who makes you have too much energy. •Space Invader: He makes you get in other people’s space bubble. Ask your child how to defeat these unthinkables.
Writing Workshop Banyan writers are examining the work of the author, Angela Johnson. She writes small moments with details. The students wrote a remembering plan and came up with many ideas for writing memories. Now, they are sticking to one moment and writing as much as they can about it.
We are learning about smart guesses and wacky guesses. A smart guess is based on some good information. We use our smart guess toolbox: our eyes, our ears, our brains and our hearts to figure out what others might do or what others might be feeling or thinking. Wacky guesses are based on no information so it is hard to use our toolbox. A Banyan student could make a smart guess about what we might do for math tomorrow but it would be hard to make a smart guess about what their teacher is going to have for dinner. The students do not have enough information to make this smart guess so they turn to a wacky guess. We make smart guesses when we read about books and make predictions and when we interact with our peers and family to predict what someone might do or how they might feel or react to
Science and Art: The children researched their bird. They drew a detailed watercolor of the bird in its habitat. They built nests outside and found out it was hard work!
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3-D Geometry Banyan mathematicians are exploring 3-D shapes. We learned some math vocabulary words: edge, face and vertices. We use these words to describe 3-D shapes.
Geoblock Footprints
We used Geoblocks to notice that each shape has many footprints.
Build A Wall
Students took turns fitting shapes together to build a wall.
Copying Cube Things
Students created 3-D “cube things” and tried to copy their partner’s creation.
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