Week of September 22nd

This week we saw a movie about 3 branches of government in Social Studies. One branch is for the President. That is called the Executive Branch. Then the Legislative Branch makes the laws. The Supreme Court makes up the Judicial Branch. In Science, we learned about the 9 phases of the moon. One of the phases is full moon. That's when you see the whole side of the moon that is facing the sun. The next phase is the waning gibbous. The moon in this phase sort of looks like a cookie in which someone took a bite out of it!! :) In Reading we are learning about synonyms. Synonyms are words that mean the same thing, for example big and huge. In Math, we used square inch cubes make a runway for planes. We determined the length and the width of the runways. This was part of our learning about perimeter. In Writing we made timelines of our stories. In Chorus, some of us learned the Star Spangled Banner and the Spirit of America. In Art, we were drawing one of our favorite heroes and writing why they are special to us. In PE, we took more fitness tests. In Music we sang a song that helps us remember do, re, me, fa, so.... etc. Some people are running to be elected for Student Council in our classroom for representatives. We are voting this afternoon for our Student Council officers and representatives. We'll tell you more next week! Adios!

Week of September 15th

A flood happened in the basement at Washington School on Sunday, so we had no school on Monday! Our basement was full of a lot of water. In P.E. we started taking fitness tests. We did the sit ups and step ups this week. In Science we are learning about asteroids, comets, and meteoroids. Comets are made up of ice and dust. We will learn more about this in the next few school days. In Music we used headsets that were connected to the computers so that we could talk to each other while we worked on Super Duper Music Looper. Super Duper Music Looper is a program we use to make our music and listen to other people's songs. In Math we are learning how to make point graphs. We measured our height and arm span and used that data to put in our point graph. In Social Studies we watched a video on the 13 colonies and how they became the United States. Mrs. Cole is also teaching us about the flag and what the colors stand for. For example, the red stands for the blood shed by the soliders. In Writers' Workshop we started working on our endings for our stories. We are adding setting, dialogue, and action to make them meaningful. We also worked on making strong leads. Strong leads have setting, dialogue, and actions as well. This week in reading we worked on finding the theme of a story. The theme is what the author's trying to tell you about life. We worked on strong and weak questions from Gleam and Glow. Strong questions start with: who, where, when, why, what, and how. Weak questions answer with "yes" or "no". We worked on making as many strong questions as we could. We were also thinking about alternate titles to the text that we were reading.

Week of September 8th

In Science we learned how the Earth rotates around the Sun and the moon rotates around the Earth. We watched the video on the Solar System that is posted on our blog and we modeled this using our own bodies! One person would be the moon, one would be the sun, and one would be the Earth. Then they rotated around each other! In Technology, we used little egg timers with our Promethean Board. We answered questions about categorical and numerical variables. In Math we learned how to find the median. Some of the medians we found were how many phones we have in our house, how many video games we have, how many brothers and sisters we have, and how many pets we have. In Reading, we read The Lily Cupboard. We worked on questioning. We created questions before, during, and after reading the story to comprhend better. Yesterday we started working on theme. We will continue working on this next week. In Social Studies we are making posters about the Colonial Times. We also made a diagram comparing life in the Colonial Times to life today in America. In Writing we worked on creating really interesting leads to our stories. If the lead is really good, then the reader will want to continue to read our stories! We read the lead to Jose's story out loud. It was so fabulous that everyone wanted him to read more!! We also had an assembly about Student Council. There will be an election and the whole school will be voting!

Monday and Tuesday's Science Lesson

If you want to show someone at home how many months it takes the Earth to rotate around the Sun, check out what's below!

Mrs. Choudhary and Uncle Peter

Mrs. Choudhary's uncle, Uncle Peter is the Commander of the Schiller Park Fire Department. We are lucky to have him as our Fireman Buddy this year! He came in and read us the story, Tacky the Penguin. We talked about how Tacky was a unique penguin just like all of us are unique people. We created little logos with symbols to represent ourselves. They are hanging up in our classroom along with our pictures. Uncle Peter made one and it's hanging up with all of ours in the classroom! :)


This is Mrs. Choudhary.

Week of September 1, 2008

This week in Writers' Workshop, we learned the difference between a watermelon story and a seed story. A watermelon story is for example, about a whole day. A seed story is a small moment in that day that you liked the most. In Music class we learned about steady beats. We also learned that a long time ago people used tape players and cds to listen to music. In Math we made bar graphs to learn more about our classmates. We learned about variables and values too. In PE, we are learning about disc golf. We are just starting to learn about it, and hope to play today! In Art we are drawing pictures that we see in our brains on paper with oil pastels. In Science we learned about the four layers of the Earth's atmosphere. The closest layer to the Earth is called the troposhere. Then comes the stratosphere, the mesosphere, and finally the thermosphere. In Social Studies we learned about the 13 colonies and how the Revolutionary War started. In Reading we read the book Peppe the Lamplighter while worked on making predictions and studying character traits of people in the story. In technology we are learning how to use our laptops at Washington School. Stay tuned for next week's update! Adios!

Pictures of our Classroom

This is Mrs. Choudhary's desk. You will hardly ever find her there during the day, but you'll find her there before or after school! :)


This is our Guided Reading Table. A different group comes to read everyday together with Mrs. Choudhary during Readers' Workshop.


This is the Star of the Week board and our supply area. Each week Mrs. Choudhary picks a Star and that person posts pictures and fills out a All About Me sheet. That person is the messenger, lunch helper, and overall classroom helper for the week. On Friday, the Star shares his/her information and pictures and then the rest of the class gets to ask questions to learn more about him/her.
We share all of our supplies in Room 101. So, they go in tubs and when we need something, we just ask and take a tub to our table.


Here are our mailboxes and our Class Norms board. Each day we check our mail for important letters to go home.


This is our computer area. Our school has a mobile computer lab with laptops on it which we use when we all are working on a lesson. However, these computers are in the back of our room for AR tests, or spontaneous work.


This is our brand new Promethean Board. He looks sort of like a robot! We use him every single day. No more writing on the blackboard/chalkboard/or white dry erase board. This guy hooks up to the laptop and is completely interactive. We'll post some pictures later of us using it.


This is our carpet area from a different angle. On the shelf are our supplies for indoor recess. Also on the windows are our Math Charts to help us with important ideas in math.


This is our carpet area and our classroom library. We have Readers' and Writers' Workshop here. When we have silent reading time, some of us are allowed to sit on the carpet and read too.

September Tunes!

Check out some of the music we are listening to during our Silent Reading Time in the afternoon!