Animal Inquiry

I'm sorry; I wrote this entry on September 20, but it did not get published. I just realized the error.

Last week the class selected the animals about which they were most interested in learning more. The class has been divided into five teams, each researching a different animal. The groups are Dolphins, Penguins, Big Cats, Raptors, and Sharks. This week the children began the inquiry process by brainstorming what they know about their topic and what they want to know about their topic. At the end of the process, they will review the “facts” they already know to see if their thinking has changed. For example, as I wandered around the room earlier this week, the penguin group wrote that penguins don’t have fur when they are little. When I questioned them they told me, "They get it later."  As I left the table, I asked if penguins were birds or mammals. The debate was ongoing as I continued my rounds. 

They are now in the process of gathering information about the animals from a variety of resources - books, magazines, the Internet, and videos or DVDs. You can help your child by gathering books, artifacts, or pictures pertaining to their animal or its habitat or by offering ideas for projects that will reflect their learning and add interest to their presentations. Books may be kept in their cubby so has not to get mixed up with our classroom library.

We could also use help in the classroom with reading and taking notes. Later we will need help with organizing the information and doing some typing. We could use help on the following days: Tuesdays at 1:30 pm, Wednesdays at 1:15 pm, and Thursdays at 10:45 am. Each work period is about 45 minutes long. If you would like to come in and help during any of these times, please let me know. Don’t feel you have to commit to every day or every week. Whatever works for you will be fine and much appreciated! If you can come in, please let me know in advance, as the schedule can change.  

We also have a field trip scheduled for the Honolulu Zoo on October 17. We will have a guided tour entitled Mammals. After the tour. we plan to have lunch at the zoo before returning to class. I would love to have one or two parent chaperones join us. Please let me know if you can help. Thank you! 

Posted at 12:52 PM| Permalink

Thanks for Coming!

Thanks to all of the parents who came to our Open House last week. It was fun to see all of you together, new parents as well as returning parents (notice I didn't use the word "old!"). I hope as the year goes by that we will get to know each other better. Thanks to Sheila Washio for volunteering to be our room parent. I know she is eager to help make this a wonderful year for your children. I also want to thank Teri Young for volunteering to be our class 'Ohana representative. Teri is also treasurer of the 'Ohana. Jill Miura has volunteered to help tally your book orders. Thanks, Jill! Thanks also to Linda Hasegawa and Teri Young for the beautiful flowers for our room. It justs gets better all the time!  

Posted at 1:12 PM| Permalink

The Morning Message

I was so pleased to notice how well the children did on the first spelling test last Friday. Research indicates that the best indicator of a child's ability to spell is their reading and writing abilities. One of the ways we facilitate reading and writing is incorporated into our morning message. I use this message to teach reading strategies, spelling, grammar, and punctuation.  For example, today's message was:

Dear class,

Today we are going to learn how to read for information.

Mrs. Bailie

First, the whole class read the message aloud with me. I asked if anyone could find a "short i" word. One volunteer said, "Information." "What other phonogram do you notice in the word information?" Someone else answered, "tion". "Information is a long word. When we come across long words in our reading, sometimes it helps to break the word up into sound parts, or 'chunks.' Let's clap as we say information and listen to how many sound parts there are. That's right! We heard four sound parts, which we can also call syllables."

Posted at 1:10 PM| Permalink