Welcome to the Rainforest Explorers Page

Welcome to the Rainforest Explorers Page! 

 

This page will be where I communicate the news happening in our class to Rainforest Explorer parents.  Eventually the students will begin publishing to the blog as well.  I am very excited for them to get a chance to share their work via our blog.  Think of this as an electronic newsletter for families.  I will email you a link for when it is updated, but also you can subscribe on the right hand side so that you will be emailed when the blog is updated.

What's been happening in class?

Room Name
Today the class named our room the Rainforest Room.  Over the past two days we have brainstormed a list, narrowed it down and finally took a vote.  It was a fun process.  We are anxiously awaiting the naming of the big front room!  The names on the rooms will help kids identify where they go for math, reading, etc.  A lot easier than calling them the big room, middle room and back room.  

Literacy
We have been talking about strategies for picking books that are just right for you and what to do if a book is challenging or you don't like it.  As part of our "About Me Unit" we have looked at biographies and started brainstorming ideas for writing autobiographies.  A list came home yesterday that your student created.  I would love to have their responses to these questions back in class by Wednesday, September 19th.  We will begin writing these this week and next week.  I have read with every student and next week we will begin small groups based around skills and interests.

Math
This week we have been working on ways to solve situation math problems (story problems) in groups and individually.  I have also been working with students individually to see where they are in math so we can move forward with small math groups. I won't be sending homework home on a regular basis for math, but will often email you games, suggestions or other ideas on how you can support what we are doing in the classroom at home.   

Upcoming
I am very excited to begin a special project next week.  The Rainforest Explorers will be helping to design and build the sandbox for our next outside area.  This will be a combination of our literacy and math time.  Skills you should expect your student your student to use and practice are measurement, scaled drawings, perimeter, area, budgeting and presentations.  Our plan is for the class to look at the area, design what they think would be the best fit, cost it out (after a trip to the hardware store), make a presentation to present to the Board of Directors and then share their final idea with the other students.  This is a SUPER EXCITING project for our class. I can't wait to get started.  If you have skills in building, drawing plans or anything else you think would be helpful here please let me know.  I would love to have some help!  (I will be talking to the class about this on Thursday - so they don't know yet).

Thanks for sharing your kiddos with me this year!

Jennifer