ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:
Thank you so much to all of you who came out to support Team Thornblowdo at Dancing with the Staff! To be completely honest, I was a nervous wreck leading up to the show! But the second I walked out on stage and heard your cheers and saw your posters, I was completely at ease! I know that there were many more of you who wanted to be there and, let me tell you, I definitely felt your spirits there! It was definitely a close finish but congratulations to the ladies from the middle school! Your dance across the decades was spectacular!
Last week in totes I sent out information about spring conferences. On the back of that sheet, you are able to pick your top three times for your conference. Please fill those out and return them as soon as possible! Conferences will be set up on a first come, first serve basis! Please let me know if you have any questions at all!
Homework packets are due tomorrow!
A request is being sent home today with students. All students will be asked to bring in a plain white t-shirt to be decorated as our team jersey. This is our next classroom reward! We will be making jerseys on Friday, April 5th. We'll need your help to do it! If you are able to donate any puffy dimensional tape, extra t-shirts, or your time, please let me know by writing your name on the request and sending it back to school. You are also welcome to email me if that is easier for you!
We are collecting money for the MDA Hop-A-Thon! Students are asked to donate a dollar. The top fundraising classrooms from each grade will be going to the Special Olympics to cheer on our very own GNG athletes.
For IXL, please refer to last week's post.
This week in...
Phonics: We will be working with the spelling patterns /oo/, /ui/, /ew/, /ue/, and /oe/. We find these patterns in the following words: root, boot, suit, fruit, clue, glue, flew, new, shoe, and canoe. Together we will sound out these words, spell them, and sort them into their appropriate categories. We'll continue to work with them throughout the week.
Vocabulary: Our new words are: violent, beware, prevent, uprooted, destroy, and grasslands. We will work together to figure out what these words mean and build connections to them. Then we will search for them in the short story called Wild Weather Hits Florida by Lisa O'Neil.
Comprehension: This week, we will be reviewing what it means to check for understanding while we are reading. Another way to say this is that we will be self-monitoring. If we are monitoring ourselves while we read, and we realize that we are not understanding what we are reading, then that is our cue to go back and reread. We'll also be working on making and confirming our predictions. This means we'll use the text and our schema to make a good guess about what will happen next. When confirming a prediction, we will read on to see if what we guessed is what actually happens in the story. We'll practice these skills while reading the story called Super Storms by Seymour Simon.
Writing: We are continuing to work on our biography projects. Students have already identified the person they will be researching. They have been actively reading and gathering information about the person's life. By the end of this week, the goal is to have all of the research complete so that students may begin working on their rough draft.
This week I am also hoping that I can begin to introduce one of the complex reasoning tools that I learned about when I was at the workshop for two days. Something we learned is that being able to compare and contrast is deceptively simple. It is, in fact, complex in nature. In order to really help students to do this, I will be using a comparison matrix. The matrix is basically a rockstar version of a venn diagram. However, students are asked to focus their thoughts and information in a more direct manner. Instead of just brainstorming off the top of their heads, we will be deciding categories on which to compare and contrast multiple topics.
This week, we will be comparing two types of weather. For example, a blizzard and a heat wave. Together we'll decide categories to compare and contrast them on. Ideas might be precipitation, activities we do, safety rules and equipment, and temperature. Then, we will use this information to write a comparison paragraph together.
Math: We are continuing to solve word problems within 100 using tools. We will be using a hundreds chart, number line, and drawings to help us solve these problems. Although students might prefer one tool over another, it is important for students to be able to know, understand, and be able to use all of the tools. When students are practicing this goal on IXL, they will need to tell you which tool they are using to solve the problem. Here is the checklist students will be following:
1. I can understand what a word problem is asking me to determine (add or subtract).
2. I know if there will be more or less at the end of the story.
3. I can write a number sentence that represents the problem.
4. I can use drawings and manipulatives of base ten blocks to solve word problems.
5. I can create a number line with equally spaced points that starts at 0 and I can use it to help me solve word problems.
6. I can use a hundreds chart to help me solve word problems.
7. I can show you what strategy I used and label my thoughts.
Science: We will be observing our brassica seeds in their life cycle. Already, we have some that have sprouted! Team Blowey's scientists will be drawing and writing about what they see. It will definitely be a challenge to use descriptive words and write about ONLY what we see.
Have a wonderful week!
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