Tuesday, March 3, 2010

This morning we went to an assembly called Animal Encounters with Ms. Beglin’s class. We sat in a circle and talked about the rules for handling and looking at the animals. All of the animals that we saw were reptiles. Reptiles are animals that have scales and backbones and breathe with lungs instead of gills. Reptiles are cold-blooded. They get warm from the sun or heat. They cannot warm themselves like people do. We saw lots of different animals. Some were: a blue-tongued skink, an alligator, a milk snake, an albino python, a snapping turtle, and a box turtle. We were allowed to touch some of the animals with our pointer fingers. Hunter thought some felt kind of smooth. Anthony D. thought the skink felt soft. Lauria said the box turtle was hard. We didn’t touch the snapping turtle because it has really strong jaws! Bruce, the handler, even saw a snapping turtle break a broomstick in half once! Nancy thought the milk snake felt kind of bumpy. Emma liked touching Hannah, the milk snake, because she felt squishy and cold. Sarah thought it was kind of frightening seeing all of the snakes because she hates snakes. At the end, she felt much better! After the assembly ended, we came back to the classroom and made sure to wash our hands very well with soap and water! Amanda brought in a Dr. Seuss book called Horton Hear’s a Who! Ms. Stern read it to us. We discussed what we thought Dr. Seuss’ message(s) may have been that he wanted his readers to learn.

We learned a new poem this morning. It is called Hide-and-Seek Sheep. We highlighted “ee” words. We also read lots of our other poems together. The more we practice, the better they sound! We also worked on a cloze activity sheet. That’s when we have to figure out a word that fits into a sentence.

We practiced again for the dance festival. Tomorrow is our dress rehearsal and our last practice before the real thing. Mrs. Fox thinks we are in good shape. Coach Hudson and Coach Seeney’s mothers are both going to be at the dance festival!

During Reader’s Workshop, we continued trying to infer to figure out words or events that the author wants us to understand but doesn’t tell. Ms. Stern read Koala Lou by Mem Fox. We had to infer to figure out words like emu, platypus, preparations, and gum tree. We were able to figure them out by using words, pictures, and our schema!

At the end of the day, we split into groups again. The first group went to the library to use the computer lab for World Maths Day. The other half of the class stayed in the classroom and read. The groups switched halfway through the period. Lots of kids did even better today than they did yesterday!

Please look for the Animal Encounters blog post on the website: http://sternwos.blogspot.com/ Everyone is invited to research one (or more) of the animals that we saw today. (More information is available on the blog.)