March 25-29

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS!

If your conference was rescheduled because of the snow day, your conference will be tomorrow at the same time it was last week!  I sent home a paper reminder with your child today.  If there are any questions, please let me know!  I'm so excited to see you all again!

Homework packets are due tomorrow!

We still need t-shirts!  We will be making our team jerseys (as our classroom reward) next Friday, April 5th!  Please send in a plain white t-shirt for your child ASAP!  I'm hoping to have all of the t-shirts here by the end of the week.  If you have any questions or are unable to send in a t-shirt, don't hesitate to contact me! 

This Thursday, students will be attending a "Kids of the Block" presentation.  Some very fun puppets with great stories will be coming to visit us!  The Kids on the Block program provides
a chance to breakdown barriers and promote healthy attitudes about individual differences.
The three topics that will be addressed are Cerebral Palsy, Vision Impairment and Downs
Syndrome.

Next Thursday, April 4th, will be our Biography Day!  On this day, students are asked to come to school, dressed as the person they have been researching.   When I say dressed, I mean very SIMPLY!  This could be as simple as just wearing a hat.  Please do not feel like you need to go out and buy a costume.  If you are unsure of what you could do to help your child "dress" like the person they have been researching, please let me know!  I would be happy to send some ideas your way!  There will be a paper reminder sent home next week to remind you as well.

IXL:

I can solve word problems within 100 using  a hundreds chart, number line, drawings of base ten blocks, or the tens and ones strategy with unknowns in all positions.

F. 12

 G.  6, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14

H. 6, 9, 10, 11, 12

 L.  3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 12,

 S.  3, 8

This week in...

Phonics:  We're studying the /ou/ sound with the spelling patterns "ou" and "ow".  Our phonics words are:  clown, growl, howl, brown, crown, round, loud, cloud, house, and sound.  We sounded out, sorted, and spelled this words together.  We'll continue to work with them throughout the week.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  lenthy, burrow, ranger, warning, distant, and beyond.  We'll figure out what these words mean and build connections to them.  Then, we'll search for them in the short story called The Coatis of the Sonora Desert by Nya Taylor.  We'll also review them in our comprehension story of the week.

Comprehension:  We'll be talking about two skills this week:  summarizing and evaluating author's purpose.  When we summarize, we are retelling only the most important ideas about the story.  When we are evaluating an author's purpose, we are trying to figure out if they were writing to persuade, inform, or entertain us.  We'll be looking for some clues in books that will help us figure this out.  We'll be practicing these skills while we read Dig, Wait, Listen:  A Desert Toad's Tale by April Pulley Sayre.

Writing:  This week, students will be introduced to the idea of organizing information on a poster.  Most students are finished with their rough drafts of their biography projects.  Now, we'll be talking about how to organize all of their research onto a poster board.  We'll also be talking about ways to make our posters colorful and detailed but not distracting.

Grammar:  We'll be working with personal pronouns:  A personal pronoun is a word that takes the place of a noun or nouns.  For example, I, he, she, it, and you can replace a singular noun.  Here are some sentence examples:  Bobby saw a lizard.  We can replace Bobby with he.  Another example would be:  The desert is a dry area where hardly any plants grow.  We can replace the desert with it.

Math:  We are continuing to work through word problems.  This week's whole group lessons will revolve around reviewing the tools we can use to solve word problems (100 chart, number line, or drawings) and also solving word problems using tens and ones.  For a more detailed description of tens and ones, please refer to last week's post.  

Remember, when your child is on IXL, have them solve the problems using these strategies!  Many students have the ability to manipulate the numbers in their heads but we are really focusing on being able to explain their thinking (by showing their work) and also having the ability to solve word problems using any tool, not just their favorite.

Science:  Our brassica plants continue to grow and we are continuing to observe and log our observations in our plant journals!

I think that's it for now!  If you have any questions, please let me know!  I hope you have a wonderful week!