Weekly Update- 1/14

Well we have been back from break for 2 weeks and we haven't made it through either of those weeks without a snowday!  Maybe next week...

I am so proud of how well the students did on their chapter 5 math test!  We have now moved onto chapter 6 which continues to focus on multiplication.  We will learn the rest of the times tables in this chapter.  Please continue to practice the facts with your children at home.  Thanks for all of your help!

In science we are finishing our unit on states of matter.  This week we talked about the position of the particles in a solid, liquid, and gas and the did a project about this topic.

We also talked about the processes of melting, freezing, evaporating, and condensing.  While learning about melting and freezing we took a water bottle, placed food coloring in it, and placed it outside to watch the process of freezing.  We placed the bottle in the snow on Tuesday and when we returned to school on Thursday after the snowday, the water bottle was buried and when we dug it out we were amazed to find that the water in the bottle never froze- it was still a liquid!  We then setup another experiment to see if it was the food coloring or the snow cover that kept the water from freezing.  When we observed the water bottles this morning, the one left on the groud was frozen, but the one buried in the snow was still in liquid form.  We then discussed how the snow acted as an insulator and kept the water from changing into a solid.  It was a great learning experience for us!  We will be reviewing everything we have learned next week and the test will be on Friday.

In shared reading we read 5 different poems: Keep a Poem in your Pocket, Bullfrog Communique, Bed in Summer, Railroad Reverie, and The Adventures of Isabel.  With each of these poems we talked about the different techniques that the poets used to make their poems sound interesting and create a picture in the reader's mind.  We learned about using alliteration, onomatopoeia, and understatement in poetry.  The students will get the chance to practice these techniques when they become poets in our next writing unit.  The students practiced comparing and contrasting and drawing conclusions in their guided reading groups this week.

In writing the students are now in the process of writing the final drafts of their realistic fiction short stories.  This week they edited for word choice, added dialogue, and peer scored each other's work using a rubric.  Next week students will complete their final drafts and share them with the class.

We took our unit 6 Fundations test today.  We will begin unit 7 on Monday.  Unit 7 will focus on adding suffixes to words that end in the letter y.

We learned a few more letters in cursive this week.  We also continued to practice the color words in Spanish.  Today we watched a very powerful movie about Martin Luther King Jr..  We will be reading a book about his life next week in celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. day.

Enjoy the 3-day weekend!