August 26- 30

Wow!  What a hot week!  Sorry this was not updated until Friday...  I wanted to see what we accomplished during the week, since the heat provided some shortened days.

This week in Science, we worked in and out of the classroom on Unit 1, getting familiar with our ecosystem.  The students took a quiz on Thursday.  Keep an eye out for that.  Some may need to be completed again.

In Math, we continued number work.  Students worked to compare and order numbers.  We then solved word problems using the four-step process.  Students then reviewed for the test before testing on Thursday.  A word on math...  we complete all work per unit in our Math Notebooks.  It is a great resource to review for tests!

In Reading, we began reading Sarah, Plain an Tall.  With this book, we are introducing an important aspect of our Reading curriculum this year; Literature Circles.  These are small groups of  readers that are on the same reading level who all read the same book and respond to it to create a discussion.  There are specific "jobs" to complete that ask the students to look deeper about each part of the book.  To introduce this, students are completing the same reading, on the same book, and completing the same job.  The discussion is then whole class to demonstrate proper literature discussions.  So far, students have been introduced to the "jobs" of Creative Connector and Word Wizard.  Creative Connector connects to the book in some way.  Word Wizard takes unknown words from the story and asks students to become more familiar with them through specific tasks.  (I will post more on each job next week.)

This week in English Language Arts, we worked on editing sentences daily and discussing those skills.  We also are doing a brief review on handwriting- print and cursive.  In a world of technology, we sometimes forget that we still need to be able to present our work in a neat and legible way for others to read.  Students also need to be able to read other's writing, and that includes cursive sometimes!

A reminder assignments.  If a student scores in D or F range, they may redo the assignment. Please be on the lookout for these and encourage your child to redo these assignments, seeking help for better understanding if necessary.

I will try to post a "projected" look at our week rather than a look at what we have done.  It is a little difficult with not being at school, but I am trying!  I look forward to getting back.