Hi,
Today was Groovy! We all had fun pretending we were in the 60's today! The kids did a great job performing in the Groovy-o-Rama. Our class had many singing solos and speaking parts and they all did very well! We hope you enjoyed the performance also and had fun singing along!
In honor of Veterans Day, Forest Creek invites Veterans to join their student for breakfast on Monday, November 12th. Breakfast is free for military Veterans and will be $1.50 for adults and guest children accompanying Veterans on the 12th.
Pen Pals are coming on Tuesday, November 13 at 10:00am! We will be meeting in the computer lab and sharing some technology with them. We created some awesome Thanksgiving themed graphs using Excel this week and are working on making some videos of our reader's theaters to present to them. On Monday we are planning on making a power point presentation to share with our pen pals as well as exploring some cool interactive Thanksgiving sites. Come and join us!
Sage, our python, had to go home to Living Science on Thursday. We had fun observing and writing about Sage. We have ordered a tree frog and it will arrive on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
Read about our week!
Reading: We are doing a great job completing books with our book club groups and sharing about the books together. We also enjoyed making inferences from poetry this week. We watched the video from the first moon landing with Neil Armstrong then read a poem called Moon. We made inferences (background knowledge + text clues= inference) about some tricky words and about the poet's meaning. We learned about personification because the poet gave the moon human characteristics. We also reviewed poetry vocabulary such as line breaks, stanzas, rhythm, rhyme, free verse, and lyrical. Reading and summarizing articles about tribes in Texas was also completed well this week.
Writing: Writing pen pal letters is always a great experience for us. We brainstorm possible ideas and then the kids form their paragraphs on their own. These letters included stories about Halloween, football, and Sage, the snake. They also asked questions about Halloween and Thanksgiving and shared their excitement about our upcoming visit. We also continued writing about things we notice and wonder in detail then pushing our thinking to get to some bigger themes and ideas. Watching a video about a soccer team in Thailand who made their own field and practiced in harsh conditions was inspirational as well as fascinating for them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jU4oA3kkAWU (Reading the subtitles was also fun!) Then they all wrote their thoughts, questions, impressions, and big ideas about these young boys following their dream. Going outside and around school to notice things and write about them was also interesting and we have some very deep thinkers in our class! We are going to write some Thanksgiving essays and personal narratives but will continue to work on observing, noticing, writing about it, then pushing ourselves to analyze our observations for deeper meaning. We also wrote cards and letters for veterans to receive at our Veteran's Day Breakfast on Monday.
Math: Problem solving is our focus. We practice many skills by working on multi-step problems. We solved some this week in which we needed to interpret bar graphs, we worked more on elapsed time within problems, as well as multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction in context. Sharing all of our strategies for working with multiplication and division by 9 was interesting and informative. We will continue to challenge ourselves in math.
Social Studies: Reading articles about Native tribes in Texas confirmed some beliefs we had and taught us some new facts.
Science: We worked on experimenting with forces this week. We made a pendulum and took data on the amount of time needed for pendulum of different lengths to complete ten swings. We also explored friction using a wooden sphere and wooden cylinders on various surfaces. We took our vocabulary test on forces today and will be studying for a test that will be given next Thursday.
Service Club met and made more bracelets and notes for me to take to Honduras on Nov. 17. I will be going on a trip to help in an orphanage and with some homeless in Honduras with my 15 year old daughter and some friends. We will take the beautiful cards, and bracelets for the children in the orphanage. Next week, our class will be writing some poems and/or picture books or cards in English and a little Spanish for the children. I will be gone the week of Thanksgiving but will be returning on Saturday, Nov. 24 with lots of photos and many stories to share with the class.
Dates to Remember:
Monday, November 12-Veterans Day Breakfast
Tuesday, November 13-Pen Pal Visit at 10 am in computer lab
Thursday, November 15-Energy and Forces Science Test, Writing Club 2:45-3:45 in library
Friday, November 16-Movies in the Park, 7PM
Wednesday, Nov. 21-Sunday, Nov. 25-Thanksgiving Holiday-Happy Thanksgiving!
Thursday, Nov. 29-Writing Club 2:45-3:45 in library, Passport to Literacy Night for families from 5-7pm
Saturday, Dec. 1-Volunteering at the Round Rock Serving Center 9-10am
Have a great weekend! Thank you for sharing your children with me. They impress me each day with their creativity and their interesting comments.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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