Weekly Updates

Here is a look at what we will be up to this week!

Phonics

This week our spelling rule is the bonus letter or FLSZ (pronounced floz) rule. When a word has a short vowel followed by f,l,s, and sometimes z at the end of a word, we double the f,l,s, or z.

We also will learn about the glued sound "all" that we find in many words, and we will start talking about the "bossy R" rule.

Spelling words will be on the back of the homework planner for the test on Friday.

Reading

Visualization is still the comprehension skill we are focusing on. We frequently talk about making pictures in our heads while reading text without illustrations. I often have the students do this during our current read aloud, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

This week the homework planner will feature AR goals. 

ELA/Writing

I am introducing adjectives this week. We will use lessons on the Promethean board, write sentences using science words and adjectives, do a project using adjectives to describe ourselves, and we will do a Halloween character art project that will incorporate an adjective writing assignment.

Math

Unit 3 will begin this week. Our focus this week will be base-10 place value and using coins to buy things. We will use base-10 manipulative blocks on Monday and Tuesday. Our objective is to understand place value. Students will understand the value of each digit in a 2 or 3 digit number.

On Wednesday-Friday we will work with play money to learn how to use money to buy things. They will be engaged in different activities such as deciding what coins to use to buy fruit from a fruit stand, playing a partner game to practice exchanging a large amount of coins for a smaller amount of coins that has the same value, and writing number stories.

Science

We are continuing our Sun, Moon, Stars unit. On Monday we will learn about scientists who study outer space. We will use the reading skill of "asking questions about the text" to learn more, and we will use the higher order thinking skill of comparing and contrasting to analyze the two scientists we read about.

During the rest of the week we will learn about why we have seasons. The students will understand the relation between the length of day and night and the seasons. Thy will understand the tilt of the Earth when we do a lab activity on Wednesday. The students will also understand what causes the seasons to change.

On Friday we will use math skills to interpret a graph and answer questions about it.

Field Trip

Please send in the permission slip for 2012-2013 field trips by Wednesday.

Our first field trip will be on October 26 to the Center for Puppetry Arts.