Investigating Diverse Cultures

Young scientists spent time discovering the wonders and uniqueness of the Yanomama people of the Amazon Rainforest! Brave scientists took a peek at the different aspects of this traditional tribe’s culture including: clothing, food, shelter, transportation, and celebrations. Scientist enjoyed learning about this tribe’s traditional ways of living off the land and their ways of respecting nature to protect the rainforest. Kindergarteners spent time illustrating and writing about their Yanomama discoveries. One of our favorite discoveries included the fact that the Yanomama don’t eat sloths!

Solving Problems

This week Kindergarteners spent Writer’s Workshop time putting the finishing touches on their best piece of persuasive writing. Students have been writing about problems they see and offering fix-it ideas to make our classroom, school, and world a better place! Their pieces may look like a poster, song, list, petition, or how-to book to convince their reader to help. After choosing their very best piece, young writers collaborated with their writing partners to practice listening and speaking, in preparation for their final Kindergarten Publishing Party. Partnerships took turns offering each other feedback, following their practice readings. Writers were busy adding illustrations to match the words in their writing. Kindergarteners were very mindful in using true-life colors while illustrating their writing.

Reading Closely to Understand Characters

Young readers have been busy investigating story elements and discovering the ways we can observe characters in books to develop big ideas about characters’ traits. This week, Kindergarteners practiced observing characters’ dialogue, actions, and problem-solving strategies while asking themselves, “What does this tell me about my character?”. All of this close reading left us with a growing list of character traits as we analyzed characters throughout the week. Curious readers examined clues like quotation marks that help us know when a character is speaking. They noticed that they often found the word, “said” very close by when they saw quotation marks. Finally, readers noticed that sometimes a narrator tells the story as an outsider looking in on the characters.

Important Dates:

• Monday, May 29^th Memorial Day (No School)
• Thursday, June 1^st Graduation (11:30 Dismissal)
• Friday, June 2^nd Field Day (11:30 Dismissal)