January 27-31

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Homework packets are due on Thursday!  Please remind your child to put their homework packet in their backpacks on Wednesday evening.  Remember, no homework = no free choice Friday!

On Monday, January 27, Team Blowey will be participating in Healthy Choice Week during P.E. class.  Ms. Croteau and Mrs. Thibodeau along with other volunteers will be leading students through different stations and teaching them about some healthy choices they can make for their lives.  Be sure to ask your child what they learned about when you see them!

SNACK REMINDER!   Please remember all strawberry, pineapple, and peanut snacks need to be kept as an at-home snack.  Please be sure to check the labels of any snack items you send in for you child.  Snacks should be healthy to keep us energized!  Also, in the classroom, only water is allowed as a drink.  Please keep all juice for lunch or home.  Students are more than welcome to keep a water bottle on their desk to help them stay hydrated throughout the day.  

All winter clothes should be sent to school everyday!  They will need their snow pants, jackets, hats, boots, and mittens for recess.  Extra mittens can be helpful as they tend to get wet and don't really have enough time to dry between recesses.  

THIS WEEK IN...

Phonics:  This week we are working with consonant digraphs.  We will work with the spelling patterns th, sh, wh, and ch.  Here are our focus words:  chest, chill, chase, shape, sheep, thing, think, white, while, and wheat.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  ancient, hopeful, unable, confirm, and valid.  We will define these words and build connections to them.  Then, we'll search for them in A Very Old Fish and  Boy Finds Fossils!

Comprehension:  This week, we will practice summarizing.  When we summarize, we retell the story using only the most important details.  A summary is usually a short statement.  We'll practice this skill while we read Meet the Super Croc.  

Grammar:  This week, we will talk about past-tense verbs.  A past-tense verb is an action that took place in the past.  For the most part, we add -ed to the end of a verb to make it past-tense.  For example, cook becomes cooked or paint becomes painted.

Writing:  This week, Team Blowey will finish their final draft of their persuasive letters.  We will also open up our Team Blowey mailing system where students will be able to write letters to each other and to other students and teachers in Russell School.  

Scholastic News:  This week, we'll read an article called Lion School where we will learn all about Chinese New Year!  We'll focus on finding how reasons support specific points the author makes in a text.  Then, we'll talk about how to ask and answer questions such as who, what, when, where, why, and how to show our understanding of key points in the text.

Science:  We are still continuing to observe our brassica plants through their life cycle.  Many of us have plants that have sprouted and soon we will be seeing buds!  We are still working on how to write like scientists, writing about only what we see and not using any opinion words.  We'll also begin some pre-teaching for our upcoming weather unit by talking about weather words.  We'll brainstorm words we already know that connect to weather and then read some various weather books to find some more!

Math:  We are still continuing our flexible groups for place value.  Please refer to last week's post to see exactly what your child will be learning to do in order to meet the standard.  When we are not switching for place value, we will be working on our year-long goals for time, money, and math facts.  We will also have some time to go back and review previous standards that we've worked on.  This week, we will go back and review our graphing standard.