Quick reminders:
Please put NAMES in/on all possessions. It's chilly in the morning, but hoodies and sweaters are shed by afternoon recess, and they stand a better chance of getting home to you with a name in them.
Please be sure to check your child's Communicator nightly (in their yellow homework folder). There is a spot for you to sign that you have seen it, including Friday. Students who return them on Monday with all days signed earn an M&M.
Scholastic Book Club flyers came home last week. You may place orders online or on paper. All orders for this one are due October 7.
Jog-a-Thon envelopes and instructions came home this week. Please let me know if you did not receive one and I'll send it home Monday. This is a fun fund-raiser for Firwood's PTA!
Upcoming week:
Language Arts:
We will be reading about good citizenship and focusing on main ideas and details. Students will continue to work on identifying "small moments" for their writing. In spelling, we are studying various spellings of the long o (o, oa, ough, oe); h-digraphs (ch, ph, sh, th, wh); and syl-la-bi-ca-tion.
Math:
SUBTRACTION! Subtract all, subtract zero; use doubles to subtract; relate addition to subtraction (opposite operations); find missing addends (variables! algebra!); create fact families (2 + 3 = 5, 3 + 2 = 5, 5 - 2 = 3, 5 - 3 = 2).
Content area studies (Social Studies):
We will continue our study of our community, Sandy. Students will select one aspect of their community that they think is important or special, and we will be creating posters to help celebrate Sandy's October First Friday.
Life and social skills:
We didn't get to memorizing addresses this week, so we will aim for that next week.
Other:
Library books are due back Tuesday!
Week in review:
Language Arts:
We read about jobs around the world; what expository text (nonfiction teaching text) is, and how the headers and captions can help us find main ideas and details; we started fluency practice, which will allow students to continue to grow in their smooth reading.
Math:
We kept working with various addition strategies, and added on write a number sentence as a useful strategy. We also focused on problem solving: understand (what do we know? what do we need to find out?), plan (how will we solve this?), solve (do the math), check (is my answer correct?).
Content area studies (Social Studies):
We practiced using maps of Sandy. We learned a key is sometimes called a legend, and that sometimes a compass rose has only North on it. We also had a guest speaker from the Sandy Historical Society.
Life and social skills:
The class has been working hard to earn marbles, and this week, the jar was filled! We celebrated with an episode of Magic Schoolbus (about artifacts, which tied in with our visitor sharing artifacts) and some popcorn. We also discussed "if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all."
