Week of November 12-16

Hello families!

We were surprised to see snow already falling outside today! It is exciting and fun! We talked today about our number one rule when we are playing in the snow... No throwing snowballs! Most students were ready to go outside with boots, snow pants, mittens, hats and warm coats.
Please take some time this weekend and make sure your child has the necessary snow clothes if the snow stays around for next week.

We read the book Knights in Shining Armor by Gail Gibbons to kick off our new unit of reading for non-fiction. We learned that in each section of the book the author organized the information into the main ideas such as; armor, weapons, how to become a knight, legendary knights, etc.Today we wrote on summarizing the main ideas in each section of the book, students chose one section to write about. Next week, we will read the book we will read the book Tigers by Laura Marsh. We will learn how this author uses features of non-fiction text to organize her topic such as: maps, labels, glossary, headings, table of contents, etc.

In writing, we have begun the new unit called "Lab Reports." We are learning to organize our experiments from science into a lab reports including these important pieces: Question (a real world question that we will investigate), materials, hypothesis, steps for our experiment, results and conclusion. This week students were writing with me as we worked through all the pieces of our reports after our science experiments.

We have started a new unit in science called Air and Weather. We began with week with two experiments, using these two questions: How does air move things? We used a group of everyday objects and used straws to move them, we also blew up balloons. We learned that air is a mixture of invisible gases with no particular shape. We learned air is a matter, that it is all around us!  Our second experiment was "How do parachutes work?" We made parachutes and dropped them from our chairs. Most students observed that without weight on their end of the parachutes stings the parachute did not float well. Monday we'll revise the experiment to include a new step, adding weight to the bottom of our parachute!


In math, we have completed Unit 2. The students took the unit 2 test, and a cumulative review. The test will be sent home early next week! Most students did such a great job learning different strategies for addition! Our next unit in math will focus on subtraction. We will focus on how to use addition to help with solving subtraction number stories, fact families, subtraction top it, counting up and counting back on the number line, playing Salute! and minus 0 and minus 1 fact strategies. I will send home the family letter early next week.

For word study this last week we reviewed long vowel teams with silent e. Most students are ready to move on. Continue to remind students when they are reading to use the silent e to help the vowel say it's name (long).  We will work on contractions starting next week!

Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Scheck