American Education Week

Good afternoon! I am looking forward to visiting with you tomorrow night from 6-7 pm in my classroom. The format for this event is an open house, so please come and go as needed. This time is for your child to show you around the classroom, show notebooks, and work. In addition, I will have a Thanksgiving day craft for the students to make (and extras for siblings) and a mummy making website for you to play with. 

Reader's Workshop

     We started our nonfiction unit this week. We learned about the text features of a nonfiction piece, and how reading these can enhance our knowledge of the text. We will also be reading a variety of nonfiction articles and write in response to our reading.

Math

    Multiplication is in full swing! We have learned strategies for solving x2, x5, x9, x0, and x1. Please begin practicing facts at home. There are many wonderful websites, and apps available to help. Also, I have found flashcards are also helpful when learning facts. This week we will also learn x10, patterns in multiplication tables, and multiples of 10. 

Social Studies

     We are learning about the ancient Egyptian civilization. This is a very motivating unit and lends itself nicely to our nonfiction reading unit. We are reading a nonfiction Magic Treehouse book called Mummies and Pyramids. During this unit have also done a lot of writing in response to our reading.

Writing

      We have finished our first draft of our personal narrative. We will work on revising our work by finding the heart of the story and slowing down the action. 

Word Work
      We are learning about possessive nouns. We have learned the rules for singular and plural possessive nouns. We will also work on identifying the difference between a plural noun and a possessive noun. 

Thank you to our mystery reader, Jack (Griffin's brother)!

Some photos of our possessive noun scavenger hunt.

Week of November 9th

   It certainly was a very busy week last week, and it looks as if it will be equally busy this week! We have the Grand Lunch Event tomorrow from 12:00-12:50. This is an opportunity for family members to eat lunch with their student and then visit the Book Fair during recess. We also have our Veteran's Assembly on Tuesday at 2:30 (please wear red, white and blue), and we have Wednesday off in honor of Veteran's Day.

Reading Workshop
    Your children are blowing me away with their insightful contributions during the end of our Character unit!!! I can't wait for you to see our final project and the depth of your child's thinking. Hopefully, we will finish this at the beginning of the week. Next up is a nonfiction unit. We will begin looking at the text features of a variety of nonfiction texts. Then we will learn how to do a close read of a text and how to make notes on text.

Writer's Workshop
    We are still working on our personal narratives. We are also writing in all subject areas. The students continue to work on writing cohesive paragraphs.

Social Studies
    We started our Ancient Egypt unit. So far we have studied the geography of the country and the importance the Nile River played on the development of this civilization. This week our focus will be on learning vocabulary. We will be reading a nonfiction book about Ancient Egypt together during the course of this unit.

Math
   Our class is rocking multiplication! We started with repeated addition, making arrays, and learning about the commutative property. This week we will write multiplication stories and use arrays to solve basic multiplication word problems. We will have a short test on these concepts this Thursday so I can assess the students understanding before moving onto learning facts. We will begin learning x2 and x5!

Science
   Our Plant Growth and Development unit is almost finished. We pollinated our plants and we are observing the development of seed pods. Be on the lookout for all of our work to come home this week!

The students pollinating our Fast Plants.

Our Halloween party! Thanks to Mrs. Godlewski for helping!

Thank you to our most recent Mystery Reader, Mrs. Mazeau!

My boys, Cole (viking) and Grant (doctor) on Halloween.