March 4th-March 8th

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework packets are due tomorrow!

Dancing with the staff is on Saturday!  Tickets are selling out fast!  Pick them up at Gray Park and Rec, $10 for adults, $5 for kids.

There will be a book swap on Friday, March 8th.  Students may bring in a gently used book and "swap" it for another book!  There will be a reminder sent home on Thursday as well.

Russell School is raising money for the Muscular Dystrophy Association as a part of Disabilities Awareness Month.  We are collecting dollar donations.  The top fundraising class for each grade level will attend the Special Olympics Track and Field Event at Windham High School in May to cheer on our own GNG athletes!

Wishlist:  If there happens to be any extra soil out there that could be sent into school tomorrow, it would be greatly appreciated!  We'll need it for our upcoming science project.

What to Practice on 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 are working with the variant vowel sound /u/ with the spelling patterns oo and ou.  Our phonics words are:  shook, hook, crook, soot, should, stood, brook, foot, could, would.  We sounded out, spelled and sorted our words today and will continue to work with them throughout the week.

Vocabulary:  Our new vocabulary words are:  conservation, remains, trouble, extinct, and hardest.  We will figure out what these words mean and build connections to them.  Then, we will search for them in the short stories called Prairie Problem and Be Careful!  We're Almost Gone!  We'll also come across them in our comprehension focus story.

Comprehension:  We will be focusing on generating questions before, during, and after reading to help us connect to the story.  This week, we will be reading a story called  A Way to Help Planet Earth.  Our focus question will be:  what can everyone do to help keep the Earth clean?  While we're reading, we'll generate questions that will make us think deeply about the story.  We'll also be paying close attention to how the author uses descriptions to tell us more about what something is like.  For example, we'll be looking for the author's description about recycling plastic.

Writing:  This week, we will begin our month long research project!  We will be using biographies to teach students how to read for information and organize that information to present it to an audience.  This week, students will simply be browsing through a variety of biographies to get an idea of who they might be interested in studying.  Then, they will make their top three choices for who they would like to study.  From there, I will assign them a person to study for the project.  Over the course of the next few weeks, they will be reading lots of literature about their particular person, gathering all kind of information about that person's life.  For example, when were they born, what were they famous for, what are some interesting facts about their life, etc.  Finally, we'll organize this information onto a poster board.

Grammar:  We'll be focusing on irregular verbs.  For some verbs, we can't just add -ed to form the past tense of the word.  They are irregular.  For example, the past tense of go is went and the past tense of do is did.  We'll work together to identify the correct word for the example sentences.

Math:  We'll be unpacking our next big unit... using place value to add and subtract with word problems within 100 with unknowns in all positions!

 This week, we'll unpack the standard, go over the checklist, and practice our menu choices.  We'll also begin to work through the standard.  The first part will be working on solving word problems using tools like a number line, a hundreds chart, and drawings.

Science:  We are starting our six week plant unit this week!  We'll be planting brassica seeds and observing them through their entire life cycle!  We'll work just like scientists to create observation journals with detailed notes about the life cycle.  We'll also be reminded about the parts of plants.  So tuned for updates!

Social Studies:  As a part of Disability Awareness month, the Cromwell Center for Disability Awareness in Portland will be coming to visit our classroom tomorrow.  We are very excited to see what they have to share with us!

Technology:  Beginning tomorrow, Team Blowey will be making a weekly trip to the computer lab to practice our typing skills.  Being able to use a computer and be able to identify and locate keys quickly will be an essential skill moving into third grade!  My hope is that we might be able to do a project or two in the computer lab as well!