Writing and Science

Writing

This week in writing we started a new unit, opinion pieces.  To kick off this unit everyone brought in a collection.  Students were to pick their top five favorite things in their collection.  From their we talked about judging those five pieces and putting them in order from favorite to least favorite.  They were not only to put them in order, but they were to have a reason for why they put them in that order.  Everyone then shared their top favorite pick, and their reason behind making it their top pick.  After everyone shared, we were off to write our first sentence, which is our topic sentences.  It was to state their favorite and their reason.  As the week went on we added to that sentence.  We learned about transition words such as; also, another reason, and one more reason.  Students were to come up with two to three good reasons their number one in their collection was the best.  I am very proud of all the hard work they did this week in writing!
Next week we will continue opinion writing, but we will learn how to use planning sheets to help plan out our writing and reasons.

Science

This week we also started our science unit, light and sound waves.  We started the unit learning about our 5 senses.  We then continued by learning specifically about hearing and sound waves.  So far to learn more about sounds waves we have done a listening walk and created a kazoo.  Students learned that sounds are all around us, through our listening walk, and all we need to do is listen carefully.  Also, they learned that sounds are created through vibration.  We learned a sound poem that spoke a lot about vibration, and we create a kazoo where we could really experience sound through vibration.  We will continue studying sound and light waves over the next couple weeks.

Lined up and ready for our listening walk

Listening carefully

Iditarod Reading Challenge

Iditarod Reading Challenge

Research shows that students that read 20 minutes a day at home are better readers. We want to

improve the reading skills of students at Songo Locks School, so we are challenging them to read

4674 hours as a group. Why so many hours? That is how many miles it is from SLS to the start of

the Iditarod in Anchorage, Alaska. Before vacation, the students all watched Balto as a

reward for ROCK behavior. We will learn more about the Iditarod during


What do students have to do?

*Read outside of school

*20 minutes or more 5 days a week

*Fill in the reading log

*Return reading log to school every Friday

What do parents/guardians have to do?

* Help children time their reading.

*Listening to a read aloud


We have until February 26 to complete our hours. All students and staff will help to complete the

challenge. At the successful completion of our challenge we will celebrate with a Book

Character Day! Students and staff can dress as their favorite book character.

Also: Mrs. Cline and Mrs. Peavey have agreed to a mushers race!

Read! Read! Read!

Learning Lane Iditarod Reading Board

Learning Lane will be charting our reading by class during this challenge.  For every 10 hours the class reads that class will receive a dog on our board.  We are so excited to see how much reading we do over this challenge!!

Opinion Writing

Dear Parents and Guardians,

For the next few weeks, we will be learning about how to
write Reviews in writing. In order to do this, we will be
bringing in collections to write a review about. Every child will
need to bring in his or her own collection of anything that
they collect in a shoebox. Some good examples of collections to bring in are Barbie dolls, marbles, rocks, baseball or hockey cards, etc.

If the collection your child would like to bring in is expensive or very large, I ask that it not be brought in, but instead you could take a picture of the collection and describe them on index cards. I also ask that the collections be brought in by January 20th. We will be keeping the collections and using them in school until Friday. Then they are free to take back home!

Thank you so much for your help with this writing lesson!

January Reminders

Early Release

We will have early release on Monday from January 5th - March 2nd.  Students will be dismissed at noon and will have lunch provided.  Although students leave early, these days are very important learning days.

Martin Luther Day

No School on January 19th in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Mid Trimester

This year is flying by!!  It will already be mid trimester for 2nd trimester on January 23rd.  Look for your child's trimester report in their take home folders.

BRRR Weather!!!

This has been a very blustery start to the new year, and we have been stuck inside for most of this past weeks recesses.  However, please make sure that you send your child with warm outdoors clothes because if it warm enough we will be going out to enjoy the fun snow.

Winter Means Dry Air

Because of the extreme cold it has been also extremely dry.  This time of year children's lips tend to dry out, and they also tend to lick them a lot.  If you can send them in with a personal chap stick that will help them with this discomfort at school.

Thank you so much for all you do for you child and their education!

Light and Sound Unit

Dear Family,

Our class is starting to learn about sound and light. My teacher said we’re going to be exploring

and experimenting with a lot of fun stuff. We get to be scientists!

These are the main ideas of our unit.

               - Sounds are made when something vibrates

               - Sounds can be loud or soft and high or low

               - We use sound and light to communicate

               - A shadow is made when something blocks the light.

These are a few of our new vocabulary words.

             - Translucent               - Transparent

             - Opaque                     - Reflective

             - Illumination              - Vibration

             - Communication

Here are a few fun ways you can help me at home.

 - We can put out different sized cooking pans and use spoons to tap on them to hear different sounds.

 - We can use a few of the same size drinking glasses and fill them with different amounts of water.

    Then we lightly tap on them and listen to the different sounds they make.

 - Using a flashlight or lamp we can shine it against a blank wall and put different objects in front of       it to make shadows.

There are also a couple of good books that we can get from the library.

         ZIN! ZIN! ZIN! A Violin by Lloyd Moss

         What Makes a Shadow? by Clyde Robert Bulla

One more thing. . . I need to bring a toilet paper tube for one of our first activities.

Thanks for helping me be a great student!