Monday, October 3, 2016

October 2016 Update



Wow that month flew by!  Here is what we have been up to and what is coming up next!

Reminders:

October 10: No School Columbus Day
October 13: Picture Day
October 14: The Little Mermaid




*****Notes***** 
~Please sign planner each night indicating students have read and done their homework.
~Students will be tested on wonderful words each Friday.  Packets also need to be turned in on Friday.
~Please return Friday Folders signed on Mondays.  Students lose 5 minutes of recess for an unsigned or missing folder.    

Reading- All bench marking tests have been completed.  The children are in groups based on their strengths and needs during intervention time.  We have started guided reading in class and students are reading from appropriately leveled readers from the Reading Street Series.  These are small books which accompany a unit questions and comprehension skill for the week.  Students complete vocabulary activities and questions about the specific skill as they read their leveled reader.
As a read aloud, we have started a Ghost Story/Mystery, called Something Upstairs by Avi, which was written right here in Providence, RI.  We will be studying RI history in our upcoming S.S. unit and this book ties in nicely to the subject matter.



Writing- Student's writing binders are set up and in working order.  We have continued to work on narrative elements, including good leads, juicy words, and setting the scene.  They have compiled their own thesaurus, which contains a list of "dead words" and found more colorful words to replace them with.  They have been composing a non fiction narrative about themselves to put in a newspaper article, which they have been working on.  These will be displayed during parent teacher conferences! We will be working on a fictional narrative next and will continue to reinforce narrative elements.
















Math- We have completed our first chapter in the math book.  Students are able to read numbers up through the millions and write them in expanded, standard and word form.  Students have learned how to round to given place values and estimate sums and differences.  We are currently in chapter 2 of our math series and students are working on adding and subtracting with regrouping, as well as looking for patterns in place value.


 S.S.  Students did an excellent job with their continents and oceans test.  They are currently working on using non-fiction text features in the Social Studies text to help them to better understand their reading as well as being able to quickly go back into the text to cite evidence.  We are currently working on creating a land form dictionary.  By having the children become familiar with many of the earth's land forms, they will be able to better understand land forms in United States geography as we study each region.  This dictionary is also very important to their understanding of erosion in our science unit.


Science-We have begun using our FOSS science kits.  Students have investigated what different types of soils are made up of and predicted where in the world they come from.  We have also looked at how earth materials break down.  This week we are investigating the two types of weathering: Chemical and Physical.  We will then be moving on to several erosion experiments, in which we observe the effects of erosion and how it can be prevented.



Here are some pictures of the children completing a team building activity called Stack the Cups.