Newsletter

Hi,

We had a great Halloween week! We tried to incorporate some Halloween fun into our math and reading activities on Monday. We read Big Pumpkin and made a story mountain to review the elements of fiction. We solved a logic problem based on costumes and trick or treating. We dramatically read aloud a poem called In a Dark Dark Wood. We had a fun day!

Saturday morning the Service Club (and any FCE families who want to join us) will be volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center from 10 am - 11 am. We will be stocking shelves, organizing donations, etc... We will be there every first Saturday of the month. Be sure to come and help!

Our class book is in the mail ready for publication! We worked hard to complete our class poetry book with illustrations. I think that it turned out great and I can't wait to see the final product. Thank you for returning your order forms. We will have a celebration when the books arrive!

Reading/Social Studies-We are integrating some SS work with explorers into our reading. We practice making inferencing by using our background knowledge and clues from the text. We did that by reading an amazing book called Encounter by Jane Yolen. It is about Columbus landing in San Salvador but told from a native boy's point of view. I read the book to them without letting them see the illustrations so that they could make inferences based on the words and their own background knowledge. We practiced reading from the textbook and using text features. We took notes as we read then used those notes and some short biographies to match explorers in Texas with where they explored and some facts about them. We also made a human timeline using events about the explorers. We will be working on projects with explorers next week and using magazines to read expository text.

Writing-Essays are our genre at this time. They are doing a great job noticing and observing and then writing about their big ideas. (This makes me realize... this makes me think...., this makes me wonder.....) We compared narrative writing and essays to help us be able to organize text when we write and to know what to expect when we read. Next week we will be using big ideas or central ideas and writing examples to support those big ideas to create essays.

Math-Elapsed time can be tricky. We have been practicing it a lot this week using small clocks as well as time number lines. (make a horizontal line, write the starting time, make jumps counting by hours or minutes until you reach your ending time) We will continue to work on this. Problem solving with patterns, input/output charts, and algebraic equations continues to be fun and challenging. We also have been working with number tricks and practicing math vocabulary like-sum, difference, product, and quotient. We are starting to work on multiplication with larger numbers and today used partial products to help solve multiplication facts. We drew arrays and then broke the arrays into smaller arrays. After multiplying the smaller arrays we added those products together to get the answer for the large array. It sounds confusing but is quite useful and efficient once they get the hang of it! More of that is coming next week.

We will be working with energy next week in science.

Don't forget to bring in pillows for the Pillow Drive for soldiers returning to Fort Hood.

Dates to Remember:
Monday, November 7-Running Club
Tuesday, November 8-Service Club 2:45-4:00 pm, TAG Informational Meeting at 5:00 pm,
PTA Meeting and Senior Coyote Choir Concert at 6:30pm
Wednesday, November 9-Senior Choir Concert at 8:30am
Friday, November 11-Veteran's Day-Come eat breakfast with your child
Monday, November 14-Running Club
Tuesday, November 15-Math Club-2:45-3:45pm
Thursday, November 17-Thanksgiving Meal at lunch 11:55, Writing Club-2:45-4:00pm
Wednesday, November 23-Friday, November 25-Thanksgiving Holiday

Have a wonderful weekend! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew