February 3-7

Dear families,

We began reading workshop this week working on learning to read longer, more complex stories and to use strategies to hold on to the meaning of the story. Students each have a same book partner. Partners are reading the same books and helping each other by asking these questions:
What is happening so far?
What is it mostly about?
How is the character changing or not?
What is the character learning? What's the lesson?
This will prepare the class to begin book clubs next.

We worked today on determining the most important part of a chapter. Instead of focusing on small details we discussed and practiced writing down the most important part at the end of a chapter. This will also help students when they have to do a written retelling of a story!

In writing, we are working on making our opinion letters longer and stronger. We are using direct quotes from the book to back up our evidence. We are writing more than on section of a letter and trying to find at least three examples or reasons why someone should read that book!

Our phonics focus this week is on breaking words with -le at the end (cable, title, scramble). We learned to break them before the consonant le. We worked on writing words and we played red light, green light. Students enjoyed this fun game!

In math, we had our unit 5 math test on Tuesday. Wednesday we started Unit 6.  We began today with making a picture graph and a bar graph. We will continue to work on two digit addition. We practice measuring in centimeters

In social studies this week we read The Wartville Wizard. This story teaches students about caring for the environment. We worked on learning these 4 types: desert, forest. plains and ocean. We discussed the word ecology. We will read the book Letting Swift River Go this week and learn how mankind can have a positive or negative effect on the ecology of an area.

Wixom Elementary participated in Global Play Day! Today from 3:00-3:30 we got out board games, puzzles, stuffed animals, legos, lincoln logs and operation! We played with classmates and enjoyed some free time!

I hope you are having an awesome week!
Mrs. Scheck