Week 14

 Dear Parents, 

        This week in math we finished up measuring to the nearest inch, foot, yard, centimeter and meter! We took our assessment on Friday. We have had lots of fun practice as we measured things around the room, measured different paths that had many parts and figured out the difference between two paths!

         In writing we worked on a special gift for you that they will be bringing home before our Fall break. We also are working on editing, revising and writing final copies of our imaginative stories. This process takes longer as the children try to take over most of their own editing and revising!

          In reading we read a Scholastic News article about Veterans, took a district reading check point independently, read Rabbit’s Snow Dance  , two dramas, and Hollywood Chicken  as we reinforced the skills author’s purpose, story structure, create mental images, and figurative language! We had lots of valuable discussions about these stories and skills as we filled out graphic organizers.

           In science we began our unit on weather. We are learning to measure temperature on a thermometer, and read a rain gauge. We are tracking our weather on a chart for 8 days!

Week 13

 Dear Parents,

        This week in math we have been busy measuring with nonstandard units ( paperclips, blocks) and standard units ( inches, feet, yards, centimeters and meters. We have been estimating the sizes of objects with these standard units, then checking to see how close they were.

         In writing we worked on Veteran acrostic poems. We will give these to the Veterans on Monday as we made copies. We also are continuing to edit and revise our imaginative stories. Some have even started their final copies!

         In social studies we have learned about our government at the city, state and country levels. We have created a flip book about who our leaders are, what they do and where they work. 

          In science we have been having fun learning about magnets- how they can push and pull with their magnetic fields. We dug for buried treasure to find objects that are magnetic. We realized that some metal objects stick to a magnet, but they have to have iron in them. Aluminum and coper do not stick to magnets. We also found that wooden, plastic and rubber items were also nonmagnetic! We finished doing a magnetic/nonmagnetic sort!

            Thank you for all the wonderful conversations during conferences about your kiddos! It was so nice to share his/her learning with you! If there is anything I can do to help you partner with me to help your child, please don’t hesitate to call or e-mail me!

Week 12

 Dear Parents,

            This week in math we finished up our unit on time and area. We took our assessment and also did some fun math activities with fruit snacks. We also started our unit on nonstandard units of measure.

             In writing we had several lessons such as show, don’t tell emotions and character traits, writing sentences of varying lengths, adding details, and describing gestures. The students were challenged to use at least two of these in their writing. We are revising and editing by ourselves, Ms. Carpenter and with a partner. Next week we will take them to final copy.

             In reading we took a reading checkpoint independently. This was not for a grade. We teaching skills to independently read/listen to a story, take notes about each paragraph, find our answers in the text and write where we found them. We are learning the difference between folktales and Fairy Tales. We listened to several of each. We used graphic organizers to learn more about  chosen stories. We learned about story structure and filled out a graphic organizer about Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. 

              In science we continued to learn about force and motion as we blew up a balloon, played tug-o-war and blew bubbles. We know that a force can be a push or a pull.