Learning Our Sign Names

This week Diane came into our classroom to give everyone a sign name so we can all communicate better with our friend Zoe.  Some friends, who were in Zoe's class last year, already had a sign name and were able to remember it from last year.  Diane, who is deaf herself, also talked to us about what it is like to be hearing impaired and how deaf people communicate in both the deaf world and the hearing world. This was a great learning experience for all of us.

This week we have been spending a lot of time making quilts in math.  We have been talking about different things we have noticed about our quilts and I have been amazed by the observations everyone has made.  We have found all kinds of patterns-including growing patterns and have been using our understanding of growing patterns to figure out how many squares and triangles we need to complete each quilt square.  Our latest quilt will be hanging in the hallway outside our Adventurers space.  Please stop by and see it the next time you are in school.

We have continued readers and writers workshop this week in literacy.  In readers workshop we have continued to talk about ideas for partner reading and have been meeting in our guided reading groups. We also talked about recommending books to others and had an opportunity to recommend a book to another friend in our class.  In writers workshop we have continued to learn different strategies for planning our stories before we write them down.  We are looking forward to choosing our best piece to begin publishing next week.

I have been so impressed with the homework that has been coming in every week.  It's great to see so many friends choosing to do the desserts on the menu even though they are optional.  I'm seeing so much creativity and it is giving me an opportunity to get to know each one of my students better.  I look forward to this every week.  Thanks so much for being so supportive of my somewhat  "non-traditional" approach to homework!

 Don't forget this Thursday is Math Night for Adventurers families.  Math night will take place in the Adventurers space from 5:30-7 PM.  Many thanks to all those parents who have been working so hard to put this together for us. 

A quick reminder that Parent Conferences are coming up in November.  Please scroll down to the bottom of the blog to see your scheduled time.  Please contact me if that time won't work for you and we will set up another time that does.

Happy Halloween!