Hello ELL Families:
It's amazing how fast the time is moving! We have now started our second quarter of school and the students are busy at work on many activities in ELL. Here is what's happening:
Kindergarten students continue to work on letter identification, letter sounds, and identifying pictures that begin with certain letter sounds. They will also be reading a book entitled, Carlos' First Thanksgiving, in which they will be exposed to many new vocabulary words including foods from different countries and why Thanksgiving is celebrated in America.
First grade started a unit on fruits and vegetables last week and will finish it up this week. We have learned many new fruits and vegetables and enjoyed sharing which ones we like, which ones we do not like, and those we have never seen before! We completed a T-Chart of our favorite fruits and vegetables and will be completing a matching activity and discussing which fruits can be peeled and which ones do not need to be.
Second grade has been working hard reading and discussing a story that they did in class entitled, Lemonade For Sale. We discussed ways to earn money and completed a semantic web about different ways we use money that we earn. Some of these ways included saving money at the bank, spending money, giving it to needy people, paying the bills, buying food and even how to make a profit from having a lemonade stand! Wow! I was very impressed!
Third grade has been comparing and contrasting two books that we read in our class entitled, The Three Little Pigs and The Wolf's Story. At this point, we have read both books, discussed all of the vocabulary words from both books, and are now in the process of completing a venn diagram together, in small groups, comparing the similarities and differences between the stories. We will finish the lesson up later this week with a summarizing activity and possibly writing a friendly letter to either the pigs or the wolf.
Fourth grade just recently finished up their unit on the Northeast Region of the United States. The students have now begun their Rocks and Minerals unit. The students have been assigned to work with a buddy during this weeks' activities. They are reading two books. One book is about minerals and the other is about rock types. One group defined minerals and labeled different types of minerals that we know of or use. The second group wrote a summary of one of the rock types that they learned about in the book. Later this week, we will complete two vocabulary activities about rocks and minerals.
Fifth grade has been working very hard on figurative language. We have discussed what figurative language is and how it makes literature interesting. At this time, we have discussed similes, metaphors, and idioms. We just finished a fun activity on idioms. Please ask your child to tell you a new idiom that they just learned and what it means. Also, I have asked the students to tell me an idiom that they may have in their native languages. I thought that they would enjoy sharing some of these silly sayings during ELL class.
I hope that you enjoyed reading about all of our activities. Please check back soon for more updates.
Stay warm!
~Mrs. Bennick :-)
