November 2, 2018

We had such an amazing week!  I am just blown away by how much we are getting accomplished every week.  We are able to do so much extension in our class because the students are on-task and giving 100%.  Check  out below to see what we've done this week in Room 315...

Phonics/Grammar: We used a vocabulary list of interesting verbs to spice up our speaking and writing and also practice conjugating past, present, and future tense. We practiced application of capitalization, punctuation, and spelling while writing a response to a reading passage.

Reading:  We finished The White Giraffe and created a story map of the important events from the novel. We will begin The One and Only Ivan on Monday!  Make sure to send in the book with your child.  We continued our study of informational passages, using the  articles "Erosion" and "Tortoises and Sea Turtles".  We are practicing  the very important skill of identifying key vocabulary and looking for topic sentences to help determine the main idea of a passage.  We are continuing to practice answering comprehension questions by finding the text evidence within the passage. Please continue to emphasize this at home when your child is completing homework.

Math:  We practiced multiplying by multiples of 10 and 100 and learned how to show models  of these problems with base ten blocks as well as on an open number line. We practiced several "exemplars", which are challenging math word problems that involve  using higher level thinking skills and multiple steps to solve.  We had a doozy that even stumped me for a while, but Christopher, Samara, Riley, and Caleb were able to come up with the correct answer!  Way to use GRIT with a tough problem! We also had some fun on Halloween and completed a couple of logic puzzles, using clues to determine the answer to some tricky math questions.

Writing:  We began our unit on informational writing, determined what our first topic will be, and began writing down as much information as we could.  We looked at ways to organize the information and will continue with this topic of study for several weeks.  I can't wait to see the amazing books these students are going to produce. We took a little break from our informational writing to have fun on Halloween and come up with some spooky stories. I was so impressed with the stories!  The kids ALL incorporated interesting characters, dialogue, setting details, and a great PLOT.  I think we may have some professional authors on our hands!

Class News and Announcements...

WELCOME Hannah Smith to our class! Hannah joined us today and she is already fitting in like she's always been with us!

There will be no school on Tuesday due to Election Day.

Please send in The One and Only Ivan on Monday with your child.

Our Thanksgiving Lunch in the Kemp café will be on November 9th at 11:55. Please note this is not our usual lunch time. We would love for you to join us!

Our holiday party is officially scheduled for December 20th at 8:40 if you would like to join us! Mrs. Mize and I will be working on the details after Thanksgiving and she will contact parents who are interested in helping out with an activity.