November 26th-November 30th

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework is due tomorrow!  Please remember to send it back to school with your child!  Also, if you have any feedback, please write it down on the packet.  All of your feedback has been so helpful!

Thank you so much to all of the parents who have been so generous!  Our classroom recently got a bunch a new goodies!  We received:

-index cards so we could make flashcards to practice our math facts

-new play-doh to help us practice our spelling words

-not one but TWO beautiful mailboxes to help us set up a mailing system so we can continue writing friendly letters (one mailbox will be used for Team Blowey mail, the other mail box will be used for mail going to outside classrooms)

Please remember to send in a healthy snack for your child every day!  We eat snack in the afternoon to help us keep our brains energized!

The weather has cooled down quite a bit so please send your child to school with their jackets, hats, and mittens.  

This week in...

Phonics:  We are practicing the long /o/ sound with the following spelling patterns:  o, ow, oe, and oa.  We sounded out, spelled, and sorted these words:  told, most, grow, mow, crow, toe, goes, toast, soap, and foam.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  imaginary, uniform, practices, starting, tryouts, and coach.  After talking them out with partners, we'll search for them in the story called Brian Gets Fit on the Field by Emily Goldman.

Comprehension:  Our focus for this week will be to generate questions and to make inferences.  When we generate questions, we're asking ourselves questions as we read to help us understand the characters, the story problem, and what might happen next.  When we are making inferences, we really have to make our brains work hard!  We have to take what we already know and what we've read to figure out the parts that the author didn't necessarily tell us in the story.  We'll be practicing these skills while reading There's Nothing Like Baseball by Angela Johnson.

Writing:  This week, we'll be writing an explanation.  Student's will need to include personal feelings, lots of details, and reasons to help their audience understand the writer's opinion or experience.  We'll make sure to use precise words to make the writing clear, we'll organize our ideas and give good reasons to back up our opinions, and we'll make sure we vary the types of sentences we use to make our writing more interesting.

Grammar:  We'll continue our practice with possessive nouns.  Whenever we want to show possession, we need to add an apostrophe and an s.  Sometimes we get tricked, though, and add an apostrophe to any words that end in s!  

Math:  We're continuing to work with odd and even numbers and being able to prove why a number is either even or odd.  We're also working with rectangular arrays.  When we're working with arrays, we're adding up how many same-sized squares are in an array by using a repeated number addition equation.  This will provide us with the foundation for multiplication.  Arrays give students the concept that they can add the same number over and over again.

Social Science:  This week our read alouds are focusing on weather.  While we're reading, we'll be adding weather words to our anchor charts to help us become more familiar with them as we dig deeper into the world of weather. 

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday and I hope you have a fabulous week!

November 13-16th

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Remember to send in your child's homework packet on TUESDAY!  It shows me how they practiced at home and allows me see any of your feedback.

Next week is Thanksgiving Break!  No school!

Remember to send in a healthy snack for your child each day!   That snack helps keep their brains fueled and energized for the rest of the day.

Here are the things you can practice with your child on IXL:

Graphing: R. 2-7

Facts:  L. 1-5, E.  1-12

Time:  Q. 2-5, 7-10

Geometry:  T. 1-3

Fractions:  U. 1-5

Odd and Even:  A. 6, 7

 

Unfortunately, there is nothing on IXL to help with Arrays.

 

Classroom Wishlist:  Playdoh and index cards!  If you are willing and able to donate any of these materials to the classroom, it would be greatly appreciated!

 

This week in...

 

Phonics:  We are practicing the long /i/ sound with the spelling patterns:  i, igh, ie, and y.  We practiced sounding out, spelling, and sorting the following words:  sight, high, light, mind, wild, tie, lie, cry, dry, try.

 

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  peered, giggled, snuggled, fluttered, vanished, and recognized.  We figured out what these words meant and built connections to them.  Then, we searched for these words while we read the story Leo Grows Up by Kevin Lee.

Comprehension:  We are working on generating questions and making inferences.  Good readers are always generating questions about a story to help them understand a story better.  We'll be asking questions about the characters, problem, or what might happen next.  We're also going to be practicing how to make inferences.  The answers to some questions won't always be in the text so we'll have to use what we read and what we already know to make an inference.  

Writing:  We'll be discussing the steps of how to write a how to story!  We'll be practicing using transitions words and making our ideas clear so that any reader will be able to do whatever we're telling them to do!  This week, we'll be writing a story about how to catch a turkey!

Grammar:  We'll be working on possessive nouns.  A possessive noun shows who or what has something.  We'll be talking about how to add an apostrophe and an s to a singular noun to show possession.

Math:  This week, we'll be diving right into odd and even and arrays.  These two standards are combined to making the following checklist.  In order for your child to meet these standards, they must show:

1.  I know that even numbers can be made into groups of two (partners) or two equal groups (teams).

2.  I know that odd numbers cannot be made into groups of two (partners) or two equal groups (teams).

3.  I can write a doubles number sentence to represent an even number and a near doubles number sentence to represent an odd number.

4. I can add the same name repeatedly to find out the total number of squares in an array.

5.  I can write an equation that shows the total number of squares.

This week, we'll be doing mini lessons to help students with each part of this checklist.  Students will be working on their own individual goals by practicing a choice from our menu.  When they feel like they are ready to meet the standard, they will present their evidence to me and complete a check-in.  If their evidence and check-in are correct, they will move onto the next goal within these standards.  

Science:  This week, I will be beginning some weather related read alouds.  These will serve as an introduction to our year long science goals that focus on air and weather.  

IXL

Here are the things you can practice at home to help with the things that we are working on at school.

Graphing: R. 2-7

Facts:  L. 1-5, E.  1-12

Time:  Q. 2-5, 7-10

Geometry:  T. 1-3

Fractions:  U. 1-5

Odd and Even:  A. 6, 7

November 5th-9th

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework packets are due TOMORROW!

October reading calendars are due!  Send them back to school ASAP!

If you haven't already sent the name and address of a friend or relative who is willing to participate in our Flat Stanley project, please send it to me by WEDNESDAY!  We would love to start getting our letters going.  Our goal is to have our flat selves and letters ready to mail by the end of next week!

Thank you so much to all of you who were able to help us with our Harvest Party last week!  We had a blast!  We wouldn't have been able to do it without you!

Classroom wishlist: 3M masking tape and, if anyone happens to have one, a mailbox (a girl can dream right!).  I'm hoping to set up a mailing system in our classroom to help Team Blowey practice letter writing throughout the year.

This week in...

Phonics:  We're practicing the long /a/ sound with the spelling patterns "ai" and "ay".  Our words for the week are:  main, wait, sail, tail, train, jay, pay, stay, hay, and may.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  serious, broken, personal, informs, and heal.  We will figure out what these words mean and build connections to them.  Then we will search for them in two short stories called A Ride to Help and  Time for an X-Ray. 

Comprehension:  We will continue our work with summarizing and identifying the sequence of events.  When we summarize, we only retell the most important information in the story.  When we are looking for the order of events in a story, we are looking out for key words like first, next, then, and last, to show us when events happened.  Below is a video that talks about some of the words that help us with identifying the order of events in a story.  Check it out!

Writing:  We are continuing to work on writing friendly letters and identifying the parts of a friendly letter.

Grammar:  We'll be working with proper nouns.  Proper nouns are days of the week, months, and holidays.  We'll work together to find these things and make sure they always start with a capital letter.

Daily 5:  Beginning this week, we are starting campfire reading groups.  Team Blowey is divided into four teams.  Each team is assigned a book to read and respond to.  Then, later in the week, each team will meet with me to go over the book.  This is a time for me to enforce the comprehension and accuracy strategies that we are working on.  When we meet, students gather around the campfire and we'll read with flashlights.  Then, we'll start some campfire conversation by talking about the book they we've been reading this week. 

Math:  This week, we are ending our work with fractions and will begin to move into odd and even.  Here is the standard that we will be unpacking:

MA.02.OAT.03.01

Determine whether a group of objects (up to 20) has an odd or even number of members.  Write an equation to express an even number as a sum of two equal addends.

We'll also be pretesting to see exactly what students will need in order to meet this standard.

Social Science:  We have been talking a lot about elections lately.  We know that this a big year for our country and that a lot of adults will be making their voice heard tomorrow by voting for who they think will help our country the most.  In order to help us understand this a little more, we've been listening to our own candidates for classroom president by reading these books:

Tomorrow, students will be filling out their voter registration card and heading to the voting booths to cast their vote for who they would like for president:  Duck, Grace, or me!  Later this week, we'll be working on a writing activity where the students will write about what they would do if they became President.  

If you have any questions, please let me know!  I hope you have a fabulous week!