August 19th Update...

Dear Parents,

Thank you for visiting today!  We had an awesome week...our behavior was exemplary!  Everyone earned their Friday surprise.  I'm very proud of how the students are taking on responsibility of their learning and making good decisions in order to make that happen. Check out below to see what we've been doing in class...

Phonics/Grammar:  We continued our study of nouns, focusing on abstract nouns.  We looked closely at how some abstract nouns can be confused with the verb form of the word.  We worked on writing sentences using abstract nouns.  We also learned the long vowel spelling pattern that uses two vowels.We took our second assessment today. Check out your child's folder for his/her score.

Writing: We studied two mentor authors; Jane Yolen and Karen Hesse.  We looked at the strategies they used to make their stories exciting and interesting to their readers.  We focused on how they wrote their stories "bit by bit", taking their time to add details to the most important moments. We looked at how they used dialogue in their books and how they showed what was happening, not just telling a summary of events.  I modeled writing a narrative and revising it to make it better.

Reading: We read six chapters of Stone Fox. We did a "close reading" of the text, looking for context clues to help us decode difficult words.  After completing a close reading, we wrote a short summary of that chapter. We also noticed where the author wanted us to "envision" the scene, using very descriptive language.  We worked in small groups to practice oral reading fluency. We took the  Reading Inventory, which is a reading comprehension assessment that determines your child's lexile level.

Math:  We took our rounding assessment using the Irespond system (remotes). This was a district assessment that I will share with you at conferences.  We'll be taking a county assessment on each math standard that is covered in addition to our regular tests. This week, we began looking at effective addition and subtraction strategies; finding partial sums and differences using expanded form of numbers and chunking on a number line. This assessment will be on Monday.  We'll then be jumping right into multi-step word problems involving addition and subtraction.   We had a number talk every day, reviewing great mental math strategies. We also worked on a spiraled math sheet during morning work time to review 2nd grade skills and early 3rd grade skills. A small group of students visited the Innovation Lab to work with Mr. Brazile on math logic puzzles. On Friday, we took the Math Inventory, which is an online assessment given in order to determine math abilities and progress. These results will also be shared at conferences.

Science: We began our unit on Rocks and Minerals. We learned that there are physical attributes that help identify rocks and minerals. We talked about the Mohs Scale  of Hardness and how it is used to compare and identify rocks.  We also had our first Talent Development lesson with Mrs. Dorsey and learned about complimentary colors and the tricks your eyes can  play on you!

Class News and Announcements...

Thank you to Mrs. Bazarsky for working on our class directory.

Thank you to all the parents who donated extra flashcards and chapter books!

Please make sure your child is  practicing addition facts every night.  When we are doing number talks, many children are still using strategies that show they are not yet fluent with simple single digit addition and subtraction.  This is a must!

Today, Performing Arts permission slips and collection envelopes went home. Please sign and return next week.

Conversation Starters...
*Who is Clifford Snyder and why doesn't little Willy like him?
*What does little Willy decide to do to save Grandfather's farm?
*What is your favorite strategy in math to add or subtract? Why?
*What are you writing about in your writing notebook? How did you come up with the topic?