Quick reminders:
Please be sure your child brings a coat or sweater each day, as we go outside each day, and fall is here. Coats and sweaters with names or initials in them are the best!
Upcoming week:
Language Arts:
We will begin a new unit of study: "Staying Alive," which is all about animals and their adaptations for survival. We continue to study phonics, and will learn about verbs. We will focus on plot--what is it, and how do we summarize it--and making inferences.
Students will also get their fluency partners, to practice building reading fluency. This is a great way to build confidence and skills as a reader through repeated readings of a text. Students love graphing their growth and celebrating it!
Math:
We are also starting our second unit of math: it is all about patterns, skip counting, repeated addition, which is all another way of saying we are laying the groundwork for MULTIPLICATION!
Content area studies (Science):
We will start to think and talk like scientists, using the scientific method (simply a problem-solving cycle) to learn about animals and their adaptations. Talk with your child about plants and animals in everyday life, and how they survive individually and as a species. Dandelions have an ingenious method of seed dispersal. Rabbits are prey animals that have many offspring so that at least a few of them will make it to adulthood. Moths, coyotes, and snowshoe hares all have camouflage. Deer run fast to escape predators.
Life and social skills:
To make life easier in the computer lab and during media, our next memorizing effort will involve memorizing school login information: login, password, and email address. Students will bring home a strip with this information on Monday to practice at home. Thank you to families who are helping their children memorize these important things like addresses, birthdays, and so forth!
Other:
Library books are due Tuesday! We have P.E. on Tuesdays and Wednesdays (a great day to wear tennis shoes rather than boots or slip-ons).
Week in review:
Language Arts:
This week we learned what an internet bulletin board is, and how to reply to others' posts and have a conversation. Students learned what an avatar is and what re: means. We also worked to publish our first small moment story in writing. We also wrote captions for our posters of Sandy that had a main idea and supporting details. Finally, we worked on alphabetizing: what is it, and how to do it.
Math:
We finished our unit on strategies for adding and subtracting, focusing on two-step story problems.
Content area studies (Social Studies):
We wrapped up our study of the community of Sandy, finishing our posters, writing about them, and sending them off to the Sandy Chamber of Commerce.
Life and social skills:
Most students were able to recite their addresses for me, but they could still use some work. The hardest part for many students was mixing up the house number and the ZIP code.
Finally, we held our Jog-a-Thon (there was a change in venue and time, to the gym, but we still had a lot of fun!). It is my understanding that students will bring their envelopes BACK home next week with their totaled laps, to collect pledges, then bring them back to school.
