EGGI Week!

Dear Family,

This week was Education Go Get It Week. We learned about some different colleges that we could go to one day and we learned about all of the reasons why getting a good education is so important. We even got to listen to two speakers tell us about two exciting careers that we could have one day. We learned that so many skills that we're practicing each and every day at school already are skills we will need one day when we pursue a career.

Mr. Santiago is a firefighter and he came to share with us all the details of his career. He talked to us about how important leadership is when you are a firefighter and all the ways he is a leader each and every day. He also shared with us some of his equipment that he is responsible for each day. He even talked about matter and how he uses his senses daily...just what we're learning about in Science!

We were such respectful listeners.

Mr. Santiago provided us with lots of pictures in his slideshow.

We were so interested in what he had to say!

He showed us all of the equipment he uses and is responsible for.

We also listened to Officer Pedron, a police officer, who came to share with us all of the details of a career as an officer. We learned so many interesting facts and even got to hold and observe a real life badge!

Getting to look at and hold a real badge!

Because both Officer Pedron and Mr. Santiago explained how important our studies are, we worked really hard in the classroom this week. In Writing, we learned a very fancy word - genres. We learned that there are many genres, or different kinds of writing that we can do when we are being writers.

We learned when is a good time to write a list and how helpful lists can be. We can make lists about things we do everyday or lists about topics that we care about.

We learned what is a good time to write a letter and what makes a letter such a special piece of writing.

We also started talking about the writing process. We learned that there are very special words that writer's use when we are working through the writing process. We know that we first think of a topic, then we write a draft which is when we do the best we can. We write drafts in our Writer's Notebooks and that is why our spelling is done the best we can using our dictionaries, sound cards, and stretching techniques to spell words that are "tricky." We know that drafts are not our final piece and we know that if we choose to publish a piece, it will need a lot of work. One part of the work we must do is to revise. Revise means to make our writing better and add more details. Mrs. Maggart wrote a story about our class going to hear Mr. Santiago speak and we helped her to revise it, or make it better. We read it over and over, looking for places to "plant our carrots" and add more details or missing words. Then, we practiced in our Writer's Notebooks revising stories.

In Science, we talked about changing the different forms of matter. We picked a solid, a liquid, and a gas. Then, we discussed at our table groups all of the ways we could change the properties of these forms of matter. We came up with some great ideas! We filled up a whole chart!

But scientists always test their ideas or theories. We did two labs this week. We decided to prove that we could change liquid. We decided that we could cool matter, or freeze it. We chose the liquids of juice, water, and salt water. Then, we decided that a freezer would change the temperature of these liquids. When we took them out their properties had changed! In fact, they had changed states of matter. Our liquids turned into solids!

Scientists always record their observations, predictions, and results.

Our 3 liquids before we changed their properties.

Now they are 3 solids!

Then, we decided we wanted to change solids. We wanted to change the temperature of a solid by melting it. We chose an ice cube. We predicted how long it would take us to change our solids. Then, we tried many different methods to melt our ice cubes while we timed how long it took for this change to occur. Finally, our cubes melted and we saw that we can change solids. We changed this solid into a liquid. Look at our graph and the time it took for us to melt our ice cubes!

We tried using our own body heat to melt the ice cubes.

We tried smashing the ice cubes to melt them.

We even tried the heat from the light bulbs in all of our classroom lamps.

We even tried running warm water over our ice cubes.

Our completed graph. Ask me how long it took my table group to melt our ice cubes.

We finished our week with a special parade put on by kindergarten: Community Helpers. Wow! We remembered when we did this parade only last year. It was neat to see how the kindergartners had dressed up like different community helpers. It gave us lots of ideas of what we can be when we grow up!

Love,