Week in a Peek for week ending November 19th

It's hard to believe Thanksgiving is next week!  We are learning many things about the first Thanksgiving this week.  On Tuesday we watched a live web cast from Plimoth Plantation.  Click here to view it at home.  Book Reports are due on Monday! 

Reading:

We completed our Skinnybones novel study and have spend the week researching different aspects of the First Thanksgiving.  The students are working in groups of 3 to research various topics and are creating large poster displays to teach the rest of the class about their topics.  Some topics include the Mayflower, building homes in the 1600's, 1600 cooking, Wampanoag and Pilgrim children and other exciting topics.  After Thanksgiving we will begin our Andrew Clements Literature Circles/Guided Reading groups.  Students will each read a different story written by Andrew Clements.  One of our reading response projects involves a small munchkin box.  I am going to try to ask the Dunkin Donuts in my area for donation of small munchkin boxes.  If you happen frequent Dunkin Donuts and could ask for a few donations of small munchkin boxes we would greatly appreciate it!!! 

Math:

We completed Unit 2 this week.  Our next unit will be on Multiplication.  Students should study their Multiplication facts to help with this unit.

Writing:

Our Turkey Persuasive Letters are coming out nicely.  The students have taken a side, either the turkey or the farmer.  Our Turkeys are trying to convince the farmer to eat something else on Thanksgiving.  Our farmers are trying to convince the turkeys to be eaten.  They have come up with some very convincing arguments!  

Science:

Igneous, Metamorphic, Sedimentary ... These were the types of rocks we studied this week.  We began an investigation on Sedimentary rocks.  Students started the process of making their own sedimentary rocks from water, glue and colored sand.  We will make observations throughout the week and when they are dry enough we should have our own Sedimentary rocks!

Health:

We began our health lessons this week.  Health will be taught every Thursday, on our non itinerant day.  Our first unit will focus on safety.  We discussed how to be safe at home and at school, including fire safety.  

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving! 

Week in a Peek!

Parent-Teacher Conferences went very well!  It was great to finally get to meet so many of you!

Reading:

We are continuing with our whole class novel study of Skinnybones by Barbara Park and the students have a wonderful job making inferences, connections, asking questions, and supporting their answers with evidence from the text.  To help at home, ask your child a question BEFORE they read the chapter and give them a few sticky notes, see if they can answer the question and give reasons to support their answer.  

Writing:

The month of November will focus on Persuasive writing.  We discussed making a list of reasons why you are for or against a topic.  The students argued the point of adding more homework to the weekly homework.  Believe it or not, we had a few students who were for more homework and actually gave some great points as to why we should have more, don't worry, this was only a task in class and there will NOT be more homework added to the weekly folders!!!  We will end our Persuasive unit by writing an essay either convincing the turkey to be eaten for Thanksgiving or persuading the farmer to put something else on his Thanksgiving table!

Math:

Our pictographs came our great!  We will finish up Unit 2 with Place Value and Mental Math.  Students will be working on place value puzzles such as this one:  

  

Write the number:

   Hundreds           Tens               Ones

      3                      15                  23

The correct answer is 473!

Science:

We will complete our Earth Materials kit this week, however, we will continue to learn about rocks and minerals throughout the month of November.  Check out the science page for some links to some fun games.

Social Studies:

Chapter 1 study guide will come home this week.  Vocabulary words will be included in our Chapter 1 test.  Please have your child study the vocabulary words.