Chalav writers have been bus working on writing their own small moment stories. We have been reading “mentor texts” books that are examples of personal narrative and small moment writing. Today we read A Chair for My Mother by Vera Williams, a Caledicot Honor book. We closely examined a small moment part of the book and discussed how the author added many details to her writing. Chalav writers then returned to their own stories and added details and “juicy” descriptive words to their writing.
In Fundations, we completed our study of the glued sounds: all, am and an. We have begun to look at the structure of words; we are learning about base words and suffixes. At present, we are concentrating on the suffix “s” and the fact that sometime when we add it to the end of a word, the “s” makes the sound “s” and sometimes it sounds like a “z.”
Chalav mathematicians are finishing up their learning about coins and place value. We have been practicing counting collections of coins as well as making a collection of coins to match a specific amount of money. For instance, I might write the number 31 cents and the children have to show a couple of different ways to make 31 cents with pennies, nickels and dimes. Children have been doing so well with determining place value for the numbers 1-100 that we have moved onto place value in the hundreds. After vacation, we will begin a new math unit on geometry.
In tefillah this week, we began learning about the shema with grades K, 2 and 3. We looked at the shema inside the torah. The children were able to touch the outside and see the writing inside the torah. We talked about the process of making a torah as well. It was exciting to have a real torah scroll inside our classroom.
Specials have continued as usual. Chalav students have been busy singing in music with Rav Shira, creating art with Hamorah Einat and playing in gym with Hamoreh Jeremy.
Have a great week and a great vacation ahead. Shabbat Shalom, Hamorah Joanne