Native Americans

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will study life long ago and today by learning about Native Americans. We will build a life size tepee for our classroom, make Native American clothes for ourselves with pillowcases, give ourselves Native American names, learn Native American symbols and use them to decorate and write, have a yummy tepee snack, and much more!

Daily 5 Reading-We will work on the goal of accuracy and the strategy of blending sounds, stretching and rereading. Students will take the individual sounds of letters and phonemes and blend them together them together to read words accurately.

Daily 5 Math-We will begin our unit on operations and algebraic thinking and begin addition!

Writer's Workshop-We will learn how to write for readers. We will begin to aim our teaching at helping the children write more conventionally. As we continue to learn about personal narratives we will continue to channel the children to pay attention to content, craft, and process while also support a new awareness of conventions.

Reminders
*Please send in a gently used or new pillowcase by Wednesday with your child's name on the inside. Please do not send anything nice. We will be cutting and painting them. :)
*Thank you so much for all the items you send in! We have a WONDERFUL classroom family!

Scarecrows!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-Our theme will be scarecrows. In science we will compare and contrast ourselves to scarecrows and learn about living and non-living things. On Friday we will build a life size scarecrow for our garden and make a special scarecrow snack! You are welcome to dress up like a scarecrow on Friday!

Daily 5 Reading-Our goal this week is accuracy and our strategy is using beginning and ending sounds to decode words.

Writer's Workshop-The boys and girls are doing a great job learning how to write personal narratives. We have begun using rubrics to reflect and self assess our writing.

Daily 5 Math-We are focusing on greater and less than and using the symbols and phrasing correctly.

Reminders:
*Red Ribbon Week is this week!
     ·         Monday – “I respect myself” – wear RED to kick off Red Ribbon Week

·         Tuesday – “I’m too bright to do drugs” – wear neon colors and sunglasses

·         Wednesday – “Sock it to drugs” – wear crazy socks

·         Thursday – “We’re teaming up against drugs” – wear your favorite team jersey

·         Friday – “Staying drug-free is no sweat” – wear sweatpants or a sweatshirt (you know you want too!)

*Wednesday is the 50th day of school! Can you believe it?! 

*Friday is scarecrow day in our classroom! You can dress up like a scarecrow if you like! Suggestions might be plaid shirt, straw hat, jeans, or khaki pants. 
*No walking school bus this week due to an early meeting for me

Pumpkins!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts-We will learn about the pumpkin life cycle and experiment with this fruit!

Daily 5 Reading-We will work on the goal of comprehension and the strategy of back up and rereading. When meaning breaks down the boys and girls will learn to go back and reread for meaning.

Daily 5 Math-We will continue to work on counting and cardinality and focus on greater than and less than.

Writer's Workshop-We will begin using rubrics to help us reflect and self assess our writing.

Reminders
*Wednesday is Spirit Night at Beef O' Brady's. It is not a school competition but Mrs. McMillan and Mrs. Hunt will be there!
*No School on Friday for students.

EEEK! Spiders!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts- We will learn about spiders! We will read lots of great books and discuss them. We will use what we have learned and construct a giant spider for our classroom! We will also use what we've learned and construct webs!

Daily 5 Reading-

·   Goal-Expand Your Vocabulary ·   Strategy-Tune into Interesting Words ·   Students build word awareness and the understanding of words so they have thinking power left in their brain to comprehend and make meaning of what is read. Daily 5 Math-We will address standard CC.6 Identify whether the number of objects in one group is greater than, less than, or equal to the number of objects in another group by using matching and counting strategies.  Writer's Workshop-We will learn how to use everything to make pieces the best they can be. The boys and girls will learn that writers reread their stories thinking about what they can do from everything they know about good writing to make their piece the best it can be!  Reminders *Thursday is our Field Trip! Please pack your child a disposable lunch with a disposable drink and write your child's first, last, and teachers name on the bag. Please dress them appropriately we will be outside all day. *Friday we will have crazy sock day and crazy hair day! We can't wait to see them! *Friday walking school bus unless there is rain. *Friday is Mrs. Hunt's birthday! We can't wait to surprise her after lunch! Shhh!

Bats!

This week in:

Shared Reading/Concepts- We will learn all about the nocturnal animal the bat. We will discuss the genre of non-fiction and it's features such as table of context, index, captions, diagrams, etc...We will also discuss and begin to learn how to research using non-fiction books.

Daily 5 Reading-We will focus on the goal of fluency and the strategy of voracious reading. Readers become more fluent by increasing the volume of reading. Your child should be bringing home their just right book they read in their small reading group each day. If for some reason the book doesn't make it home just read a book from home. Raz Kids is a great online resource our school provides for us that you have access to online. :)

Writer's Workshop-We will have mini-lessons on adding more details to pictures and stories, writing partners can be writing teachers, and bringing our writing to life by adding dialogue and speech bubbles! Wow! That's a lot!

Daily 5 Math- We will continue to work on counting and cardinality by focusing on relationships between number and quantity. We will review our math vocabulary words, work in our math journals, and meet with Mrs. Blum, Mrs. Hunt, and Mrs. McMillan in small math groups.

Reminders
*Boosterthon Fun Run is Thursday at 8:00 at the YMCA on the soccer field. We would LOVE to have as many parents here supporting the Super Monkeys as possible!
*School wide walk to school day is this Wednesday! We will meet at the park on Market street as usual.
* Walking School Bus Friday if no rain!

Class Wish List
*treasure box items
*large bags of skittles