Once Upon a Time....

What time is it?

Amidst the enchantment of fairy tales, we have also been working on telling time (to the five minutes), understanding am/pm and elapsed time ALL ON AN ANALOG CLOCK! The kids may have told you that their sweet-dear teacher covered the digital clock in our classroom and we only have analog clocks on display. What a difference this has made as we pause throughout the day to not only tell the time but also calculate elapsed time. I nudge you to keep practicing time at home. One activity the kids have really enjoyed is "drawing" a clock and time on a partner's back and the partner tries and guess the time. Another strategy we explored is only looking at the hour-hand and covered up the minute-hand to approximate the time. 

And in Fairy Tale Land...

Every morning this week our classroom has transformed into a talk show studio. I have really enjoyed how our kids have embraced this exercise by getting into their fairy tale character. The talk show forum is a way to recount stories from diverse cultures and determine their central message, lesson, or moral, demonstrate understanding of key details in a text, acknowledge different points of views of characters and how characters respond to events (Common Core Standards, ELA). A big thank you to our families for rehearsing at home, helping your child with their wardrobe, and for attending the shows. We hope to see you Friday morning for our Fairy Tale publishing party. It'll be an open-house from 9:15-9:45. 
The talk show "re-runs" will air on our Weebly sites soon. See your local listings for details!