We've been gearing up for March with lots of new books and getting our reading lives in shape. Here is some information to keep in mind:
Reading tickets--Students are bringing home reading tickets for each week in March. Please sign and have your child return the ticket if they have read for 100 minutes or more for the first week (4 days) in March. Tickets will be due on Monday morning, March 5. Then I will send a new ticket for the new week due the following Monday, etc.
FPE Bookfair Family Nights are March 5 and March 13.
March 7 is Black Out Day (wear black)
March 20 is Hat Day!
Reading Tickets are due on--
March 5th (wk 1)
12th (wk 2)
19 (wk 3)
27 (wk 4)
CONFERENCES
I am in the process of scheduling conferences. A note went home to families this evening Friday, February 23.
MATH
We've been applying all we've learned about the area, perimeter, and polygons this week with lesson involving specific vocabulary like angles, vertices, quadrilaterals, and more!
We are immersing ourselves in nonfiction for the next several weeks. We are starting with text features and text structures (sequence, compare/contrast, description, cause/effect, and problem/solution). This week we talked about description and its relationship to headings as well as sequencential nonfiction and its relationship to a cycle (diagram) or timeline.
We also got a whole bunch of new books for our classroom! Many of the books were purchased using Scholastic Book Club points.
Several of the books are favorites series books to update or series books the students have been asking for more of. The other half of the purchase was made on multiple copies of nonfiction books so we can start some nonfiction book clubs next week. The students are pumped and signed their names next to any of the books that looked interesting or that they might want to try.
While students were signing up for book club books and series books Max and I sat down so he could "booktalk" his current independent book. He demosntrates how to retel important parts of a story, he makes comparisons to a different book within this series, and describes events and characters with details and examples. Take a listen.
WRITING
We are wrapping up our realistic fiction unit of study next week! The students have been working hard to try different points of view as well as different perspectives of narrators--whether it was a character within the story narrating (first person point of view) or a narrator on the outside of the story (third person point of view). Our chapter book read-aloud is Wishtree by Katherine Applegate and is a first person narrated story told from the perspective of a tree (a character within the story).
MATH
Our current math unit is all about measurement and allows us to apply multiplication/division as well as addition/subtraction understandings. A couple weeks ago we began experimenting with permimeter and this past week focused more on area. We tried out lots of different shapes with multiple areas and perimeters and discovered that sometimes shapes can have the SAME area but DIFFERENT perimeters or the SAME perimeter while having DIFFERENT area measurements.
GRAMMAR AND WORD WORK
Throughout our reading and writing we are always finding ways to apply what we know about grammar rules and spelling rules we are learning. Through our realistic fiction unit we have been able to review and apply everything we know about action verbs, adverbs, adjectives, proper nouns, common nouns, and especially pronouns. When decoding vocabulary words or unfamiliar words within our reading (especially vocabulary within nofiction) students are able to apply their understandings of vowel chunks and patterns. We are going to begin working on suffixes and prefixes next week.
Book orders can be added anytime using the online Scholastic Store. I will submit on the 28th day of each month. I check pretty regularly, but sending a quick email is helpful.
There are several search options online and this makes all books available! Some of the top trending books can be found when you click here.
Feelin' Good Mileage Club is here! Don't forget to sign up your child for Mileage Club. The deadline to register is March 5, 2018.
Valentine's Day is Wednesday!
We will be exchanging valentines next Wednesday and doing some fun activities in the afternoon. I will be providing a little treat and ask that you please refrain from sending in any candy (unless you provide the ingredients list--required). Also, please do not send in cupcakes, cookies or treats. As I have mentioned in the past, all the students in our classroom have special needs of one sort or the other and some of those include allergies. Please respect my request to not send in additional treats. You have all been amazing parents to work with on this so far this year and I appreciate your continuous support.
In case you need the names of the 25 students in our class, here is a list below:
We had a special guest, Don Tassie, talk to the class about the ripple of kindness that can occur when we just share a little more with the world. Everyone can "Be More Kind."
Thanks to Emily Chard (Caleb's Grandmother) for purchasing shirts for the entire class! We will be wearing them with pride!
Student's brought home information about our new math unit as well as login information for Sumdog.com a website that helps reinforce and build math understandings.
Mileage club info came home on Friday as well.
The deadline to register is March 5th!
Students experimenting with polygons, perimeter, and different units of measurement.
