Weekly Update- 12/3

We have had a really great week in school!  In math, students are having fun learning about different types of graphs and charts such as tally charts, line plots, pictographs, bar graphs, line graphs, and coordinate grids.  Next week they will be using what they learned this week to make their own graphs!  Look for a study guide to be going home on Monday for a chapter 4 test the following Monday (12/13).

We just completed our unit in science on water and atmosphere.  Next, we will be doing a unit in Social Studies about different types of maps.  Students will learn how to read community, transportation, agricultural, landform, and grid maps.  I am hoping to finish this unit before winter break.

In Fundations, students are learning about schwa words.  These are words that have a letter that does not make the sound it is supposed to make.  For example, in the word "button", the o does not make the short o sound /ah/, but instead makes the short i sound.  For these types of words, students are practicing ways to figure out the correct spelling.  One strategy they learned was to write down a few different spellings and see if one looks familiar.  Another strategy is to use the dictionary.

In writing students wrote summaries of non-fiction.  We read a few different sample articles such as, A Baby Named Joey, and Who Started the Great Chicago Fire?.  Students were then asked to write a summary about the second article.  I am very impressed with their summaries.  When we did the summaries of fiction, we came up with ideas together, created a graphic organizer, and students used the information from the class to write their summaries.  With the summary of non-fiction, the students worked more independently to create their summaries.  Look for a copy of these to be going home next week.

In reading we spent the week reading a non-fiction book called, Fossil Seekers.  In this book we learned about three different fossil seekers or paleontologists: Mary Anning, who discovered the first plesiosaur fossil; Barnum Brown, who discovered the first fossil of the Tyrannosaurus Rex; and Jack Horner, who discovered fossilized dinosaur nests and baby duckbill dinosaurs.  While reading this book we practiced identifying important words in the text.  You can tell that a word is important if it is in bold, has a pronunciation key, or is repeated many times.  We also worked on how to figure out unfamiliar words.  In reading groups students practiced the skill of using non-fiction text features (using pictures, headings, and descriptive phrases) to help them better understand the book.

Students have been working hard on their cursive writing.  We are almost finished with the lowercase letters and will soon be moving on to uppercase!  In spanish this week we practiced how to greet each other.  Next week we will be practicing how to count.  In grammar we learned about nouns.  Next week we will continue learning about nouns, with a focus on identifying common and proper nouns.

In between all of the learning we have been doing, the students have also been working to decorate the classroom for winter and the holidays.  They have created snowmen and written acrostic poems about different winter words.  Next week they will be making some sleds to decorate our door.

Thank you to all who donated to the Holiday Toy Drive and to those of you who contributed money for students to create chain links for Caring Kids Week.  The hallways look very festive with the red and green chains hung throughout the school!