Hi,
Your children did an amazing job interacting with our pen pals this afternoon! They interviewed them about their Thanksgiving tradtions and performed two Thanksgiving Reader's Theaters (using a microphone! Very exciting!) They also played games and worked on some fun Thanksgiving puzzles. In the morning we decorated framed photos of ourselves as a gift for our pen pals and revised and edtited our Thanksgiving poems. We wrote them on pretty fall paper and gave them to our pen pals also. It was a great afternoon. Our next visit will be on Friday, December 9 at 9:00 am. We would love to have you join us and meet our wonderful pen pals.
Our published class books are in! We were going to share them today but ran out of time. We will read them together on Monday and if you purchased a copy, it will come home. Today your child should have brought home a stapled packet that included an online order form if you would like to purchase a class book.
Your child also brought home a letter explaining the website www.firstinmath.com. Our school is using this fun site as a way to help us practice math facts and concepts in a game format. As you play, you receive points and stickers for yourself and for our class. It gets harder as you progress through the games and there are many, many games. I was experimenting with it at home and it is very addicting! Each student has their own username and password. If they lost the little piece of paper, email me and I will get it to you. I encourage you to go on this site with your child, bookmark it, and have them play for a little while each day. I think that we will see huge improvements quickly!
Here's what we did this week:
Reading: We read some expository text in magazines and wrote on post-its as we read. On the post-its we wrote facts that we found interesting and/or important that we wanted to teach our partner. We then met with our partner and shared articles. It helped us realize that the main ideas in the article (most important parts) and that helps the us teach our partner what the article is about but the details (the interesting parts) support the main idea and helps us to make connections and encourages us to keep reading. We will continue to read non-fiction or expository text throughout the year. Book Clubs are overall going well. Most of your children have finished at least one novel and some are on their third or fourth novel! I am so glad that they are reading and finishing books but am mostly glad that they can talk about the characters and how they have changed, they can make predictions and support those predictions with evidence from the book, they are asking thoughtful questions, and discussing the novels together in deeper ways.
Writing: We used our science writing topic of forms of energy to model essay writing. Then started planning and drafting an essay about a role model. We will continue revising and editing that essay. We also took our first benchmark on essay or expository writing. They are off to a great start! We read a fun book called Turkey Bowl by Phil Bildner and noticed all the great adjectives and nouns that he used then tried to incorporate strong word choice into our Thanksgiving poems.
Math: Multiplication strategies were fun this week. We played games and looked for patterns for 9's and 6's. (5X10)-5=45 9x5=45, (7x10)-7=63 9x7=63, (9x10)-9=81 9x9=81, (5x5)+5=30 6x5=30, (7x5)+7=42 6x7=42, (4x5)+4=24 6x4=24 We also worked hard on strategies for elapsed time and multistep problems using multiplication. We will be starting some division work next week.
Science: Electricity was cool! We experimented with circuits and electromagnets. Some of them worked fine, others were a little more challenging. We also worked on a web quest activity and took a science vocabulary test. A study guide for our test on Energy came home today in that stapled packet. We will be having that test on Tuesday, November 29.
Social Studies: We will be learning about missions and early colonies next.
Dates to Remember:
Tuesday, November 22-Red Dragon Pillow Drive, Service Club 2:45pm-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday
Monday, November 28-Running Club
Tuesday, November 29-Science test, Math Club 2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, December 1-Writing Club 2:45-4:00pm
Saturday, December 3-Volunteer at RR Serving Center from 10am-11am
Sunday, December 4-Drop off fleece blankets& holiday party at Emergency Shelter 2:00-3:00 pm
Monday, December 5-TAG referral packets due to office, Running Club
Tuesday, December 6-Senior Coyote Choir Tour, Service Club 2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, December 7-Early Release Day
Have a great weekend! Please contact me with any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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