Hello Team Blowey Parents!
We made it to another week! This week starts with a bang with our Winter Concert! The concert will be at 6:30 at the Middle School. I'm so excited to see the Team in action, especially after hearing them rehearse today!
Our class fish, Paul Pierce (the team voted on the name), has settled in quite nicely! We have two teammates working together to help take care of him during the week. Jobs rotate weekly so every student will have the chance to take care of Paul Pierce.
This week in:
Reading:
Our new vocabulary words are: imaginary, uniform, practices, starting, tryouts, and coach. We'll be reading a story called Brian Gets Fit on the Field to help us with these words. While we are working on these words, we'll have some practice learning about how some words have multiple meanings such as coach. It could mean a basketball coach or Cinderella took a coach to the ball. We'll be talking about how we can use context clues and dictionaries to help us figure out the meaning of the word.
We'll be continuing our practice with generating questions and making inferences while we are reading to help us with comprehension. This week, we'll be reading a story called There's Nothing Like Baseball to help us practice these skills.
We'll also be doing some extra work practicing specific reading strategies this week. We'll be focusing on looking at the pictures to help us figure out the tricky words and rereading words. When we reread words we'll be asking ourselves these questions:
-Does it look right?
-Does it sound right?
-Does it make sense?
If not, we'll stop and go back.
During our cafe menu time students are participating in fluency, accuracy, comprehension, expanding vocabulary and writing. They are given different choices to practice each skill, some of which are individual work, and some of which are partner work.
Writing:
This week, students are working on completing a very special project. Unfortunately, I can't tell you too much about it. It's a surprise! You'll have to wait patiently until it is completed. I can promise you, though, that you will love it!
Spelling:
We are continuing spelling at our own pace. For the most part, we have gotten the routine down. We're still working out a few simple kinks and making sure we are keeping track of our goals. It's a work in progress! :)
Grammar:
We will be continuing to work on possessive nouns and the use of apostrophes.
Read Aloud:
Mr. Popper's Penguins
Math:
This week we are beginning a super cool project that combines literacy, social studies, and math! We are creating books that will teach another class about place value but also about Dr. Greg Mortenson and how he built hundreds of schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan!
Today, we read a book called Listen to the Wind by Greg Mortenson and worked to identify the author's purpose. We talked about how an author writes for a reason and it's our job to figure it out by listening to the words and looking at the pictures. We remember the purposes of writing by using the acronym PIE which stands for persuade, inform, and entertain. We will use this information in our Pennies for Peace book.
The idea for the math project comes from a program called Pennies for Peace. The program collects pennies to help bring hope and educational opportunities to impoverished countries. While a penny might not do much in America, a penny will buy a pencil in places like Pakistan. In our project we will be figuring out how many teachers, notebooks, and pencils we can buy from our 3 digit number of pennies as well as many other aspects of place value (i.e. skip counting, expanded form, number names, etc.) When we finish the project, we will be sharing them with another class.
Homework:
Homework is the packet that was sent home today. It looks the same as it did for the past couple weeks. This morning student's filled in their goals, circled what activities they wanted to do in order to practice those goals, and gathered any worksheets they needed.
Special Announcements:
Tonight: Winter Concert! 6:30 at the Middle School
December 12th: Fun Family Night! Formal invitations will go home tomorrow. Students and their families are invited for a night of winter fun! Come in your pajamas, bring a pillow, and relax while you go on a magical ride on the Polar Express. While the kids are watching the movie, I will be available to you for any questions that you might have regarding the new homework format. I will also have a short presentation available for viewing on my laptop. Kelly Thornhill will also be available to answer questions.
December 22nd: Last day of school before break!
I hope you have an amazing week!
