Week in a Peek for October 18th-22nd

It was great to get back into our routine after testing for 2 weeks!

Reading:

 

Our Read Aloud Book

Our Whole Class Novel

Our Text Talk book!

We continued to read Skinnybones by Barbara Park together as we get use to listening to our Inner Voice.  Everyone is doing a wonderful job making connections, asking questions, and making inferences!  We completed our Reader Response Journals together this week so the students each have an example of what is expected when they hand in their assignment.  So far they look to be doing a wonderful job!!  Our Inner Voice has also helped us as we listen to our read aloud book, The Witches by Roald Dahl.  There are LOTS of inferences and questioning happening during this time!  Listening to our Inner Voice will help us as we comprehend our Social Studies and Science texts as well!  Our vocabulary words for this week and next are from the book A Bad Case of Stripes by David Shannon.  Look for our vocabulary words to come home next week!

Math:

Unit 1 post tests were sent home on Friday.  Attached to your child's test you will see a tracking sheet.  The tracking sheet shows your child's progress from the pre-test to the post test.  Please return the post test as well as 1 copy of the tracking sheet.  Our Math curriculum is a spiral curriculum and topics covered in Unit 1 will be revisited in later units.  Great Job everyone!  We are continuing to work on addition and subtraction with regrouping.  At home you can help by giving your child a 3 digit by 3 digit number and having them teach you the process.  I will introduce some subtraction centers next week to give extra practice with these skills!  Unit 2 involves collecting and analyzing data.  We have created bar graphs this week all about Halloween.  Everyone had the chance to create questions regarding their graphs they made on their own.  I will keep portfolios for each unit to help with the final assessment.  

Science:

Scratch tests help us to identify minerals that are softer than others.  We utilized a paper clip, penny and our finger nail to determine the order of our minerals.  We put them in order from softest to hardest.  Next week we will embark on a Calcite Quest!

Social Studies:

Pumpkin Studies is here!!!!  Our pumpkins were delivered on Thursday and we drew our Equator and Prime meridian on Friday.  Monday afternoon we will work on tracing our continents onto our pumpkins!  If anyone would like to help trace on Monday afternoon we will begin at 1:45!  Painting will take place on Tuesday at 10:30.  A notice will go home on Monday to let you know what time to come for those who volunteered!  Thank you to all our volunteers!!!!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!  Enjoy the fall weather!

Week in a Peek

We made it through NECAP!!!  The students did a wonderful job and worked so hard on the NECAP Reading and Math during the past 2 weeks.  

Reading:

Skinnybones by Barbara Park is our whole class novel for the next few weeks.  I will model many comprehension strategies over the next few lessons.  We have already discussed our inner voice, that little voice we all hear when we read to ourselves.  Our inner voices helps us to question what we are reading, make inferences, and lets us know when we are not making meaning in our reading.  Text Talks are another way we will introduce new vocabulary and comprehension strategies through literature.  This week the students heard the story Dear Mrs. LaRue.  A note was sent home on Friday with our 6 vocabulary words we tried to use more often throughout our day.  Keep a tally at home to see how many of our new vocabulary words are used!!!


Math:
Addition and Subtraction with regrouping is our skill focus for the rest of October.  Your child will receive homework on this skill next week.  We are hoping the students transfer their knowledge of math facts to 2 and 3-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping.  Unit 2 is Collecting, Orgnanizing, and Interpreting data.  We will graph many things in the next unit!!!  Our first Math Masters celebration will be Thursday October 21st.  We had many Math Masters this month!  Keep up the good work!!!


Science:
Minerals can be rocks but rocks can NOT be minerals.  Students learned that rocks are made up of different minerals.  We also worked on properties of rocks so that our classmates could identify a mystery rock.  We also created editable mock rocks on Friday.


Social Studies:
Pumpkin Studies is coming!  If you have not turned in your money yet, please do so soon, we will begin creating our globes this week, preparing to paint them next week.  If you would like to volunteer your time during that time we would greatly appreciate it!!!


I hope everyone has a wonderful week!  

Reminders:
October 20th - Progress Reports go home
October 26th - Pumpkin Studies paint day - Wear OLD clothes as the paint does not come out!

Week in a Peek for September 27th - October 1st

I can't believe October is here.  Hopefully the weather has changed for good and the humidity has passed!  This week has been a busy one!   NECAP begins this week and it is very important that all students get a good nights sleep (at least 8 hours), eat a good breakfast, and be at school on time.  We will begin the NECAP around 9:30.  The only homework I will assign during these next 2 weeks will be a reading log and a math log.  There will be no spelling words this week or next.

Reading:

The students are continuing to work on making connections and inferences.  We have also been working on supporting our answers with information from the text and recycling the questions to help form complete sentences.We also worked on some NECAP prep items throughout the week.

Writing:
Students are continuing their Animal essays.  They are doing a great job adding details to their paragraphs.  We need to work on self editing our pieces.  We will continue editing our DLP's daily and adding to our editing notebooks.  The focus for the last 2 weeks was adding the suffix -able to words.

Math:

This week we will finish up with Unit 1 - Geometry.  The students have been working on lines of symmetry,  congruency,  and flips, slides and turns.  I have included a few web sites on my math page that will help with these topics.

Science:

We began our Mock Rock investigation this week.  The focus of this investigation is to identify what rocks are made of.  We broke apart our Mock Rocks and found 4 different types of materials, red gravel, green gravel, shells, and gray matter.  We've determined that the red and green gravel, and the shells can not be broken down any further and are there for considered minerals.  We have yet to determine if we can break down the gray matter any further and have decided to try to dissolve the gray matter in water to see what happens.  Next week we will set up evaporation disks to see what is left in our solution.  The students enjoyed being geologists and even though our dry mock rocks became quite moist with all the humidity this week, the students had a good time using their geologist picks to break apart their rocks.

Social Studies:

We will have our first test on Monday October 4th.  The test will consist of the continents, oceans, equator, and prime meridian.  The students will fill in a map listing all these things.

Breakfast Club:

The first Breakfast Club will take place on Thursday October 7th.  I will provide muffins, cereal, and juice to those students who have brought in ALL their homework for the month of September.  Students will receive their breakfast treat when they come into the classroom on Thursday.  October is another month so let's try to add to our Breakfast Club!!  Look for invitations to come home on Tuesday! 

Reminders:

• NECAP is this week.  Please make sure to get plenty of rest, eat a good breakfast and to arrive at school on time!
• Breakfast Club will be held on Thursday October 7th.
• Picture Re-take day is on Tuesday October 5th. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend and hopefully fall is here to stay!!!