Exploring New Donors Choose Items

Students finally had an opportunity to explore the new Donors Choose materials.  We have new comic books, nonfiction books, and early chapter books. Watch the backpacks to sign up for summer book borrowing through our classroom.  

Ice Cream Fun

Today our class enjoyed ice cream treats.  This was the prize that the school voted for at the carnival.  

A Musical Guest

Taylor shared her love for music with the class.  We are so blessed to have such a supportive community, all students feel comfortable to take risks.  Yahoo Taylor, we are so proud of your hard work!


Taylor sharing her talent

Taylor and her guitar

Realistic Fiction exploration

Students love making up characters, giving them names and telling about their adventures.  Realistic fiction has been a fun unit to explore and wrap up our year with.  Many adventures our characters go on mirror our own lives except we choose the outcome!  

Sharing our realistic fiction stories in the early stages of creation

Sharing ideas and pushing each other as writers

Touch and Plan

Revising after rereading

Book Review Sharing

Students shared their book reviews with their reading buddies.

Classmates enjoyed hearing about potential summer reads.

Our book buddies enjoyed being able to read our writing!

The book talks these students had were phenomenal,
they included favorite parts, connections and other
 books they enjoyed by the same authors. 

Gallagher Farms

Thank you Gallagher family for this fabulous enrichment opportunity.  We loved seeing a glimpse of your life and the hard work that goes into farm life.  

Mrs. Gallagher explained the care for the animal, what they
eat, where they live, and their life cycle.

Abella shared some of the chores of farm work. 

Gus was a trooper and allowed the students to love on him!

The piglets slept through the field trip madness.

Jackson shared the many jobs of the tractors on the farm.  The
students LOVED climbing inside.

Mr. Gallagher shared the feed corn seeds with the students, the
life cycle and how this crop is used in its entirety.  

Moomers stop before heading home for a cool treat on
this chilly day!

Writing Response to Nonfiction Reading

We are working on responding to Nonfiction text.  Students read the questions to prepare themselves for the passage they are reading and to have a purpose for their reading.  Students read a passage independently.  They highlight key words, answer questions and then reread the passage to make sure their answers make sense.  

Students then find the other members of their group that have read the passage and compare their thinking.  This is an opportunity to check and revise their thinking.  

Book Swap

The book swap was great fun!  Students LOVED trading their books for new slightly used ones!  This will be a yearly tradition at Westwoods thanks to Mrs. McPherson!  Westwoods is sure luck to have her!   Thank you for your kind donations and for supporting us in our mission to have books in every child's hands for the summer.   

Good Old Fashion Fun

Students loved using the sidewalk chalk outside with the light mist helping to enhance the colors!  Sometimes the best fun is the most basic activity!

Butterfly Release Party

Today we said good bye to our beautiful Painted Ladies!  We learned a lot from watching them from caterpillar to butterfly!

Butterflies are emerging

Excitement is in the air!  Almost all of the butterflies have emerged!  Yahoo for this fabulous demonstration of the life cycle.  Unfortunately not all of the caterpillars and butterflies made it but we also are using this as a learning opportunity about rate of development and environmental factors.  Students are excited to release the butterflies later this week!

J shape fun

As of Friday we had 5 caterpillars in J shape and of those, two were already in chrysalis.  Our classroom is just a buzzing with science excitement! 

Book Reviews

A Big Guy Took My Ball book review by: Cam B.

A Big Guy Took My Ball and it was NOT nice to take others ball.  They became friends because Piggie found Whale's ball.  They played together, read to find out what they do...

I Am Going book review by: Evan K.

I Am Going.  I LOVE this book.  If you like to laugh, this book is a good book for you,  Gerald freaks out because he thinks that Piggie is moving.  He is sad.  Read to find out where Piggie is going.  I give this book 5 stars.

How Can I Get a Pet book review by : Keagan K.

How Can I Get a Pet is funnt because the girl keeps asking for a pet and she finally gets one.  She gets a hermit crab, ouch!  I give this book 2 thumbs up and 5 stars.  This is a good book for you to ask your mom to get a pet if you want to get a pet.

Topic reading

This unit in Reading is about using fiction reading to support our knowledge or provide us with new knowledge on a topic that we can later cross check in a nonfiction book.  Students get choice in their topic and can change topics every few days. We are using Charlotte's Web as our class read aloud to learn about farms and animals.  We will be cross checking this information with other books as well as on our field trip to Gallagher Farms.