Our music performance was so cute! Mrs. Jones did a fabulous job writing the script and the songs and your children did an amazing job performing it! I am so proud of them all.
We enjoyed a "Dress Crazy Day" as a reward. There were some crazies in here alright!
We welcomed author, Ali Pfautz, a friend of mine from high school. She talked to us about her book, but also about the writing process.
Social Studies/Science:
We continue to work with Ms. Carew's class for our continents and oceans unit. We track the weather in approximately 5 cities/countries on each continent for three days, discuss time zones, explore the amount of sunlight to determine the seasons, look at maps to identify oceans all around each continent, discuss plants and animals on each continent, and explore the different cultures within each continent. Students are getting very good at predicting time and temperature!
A friend of mine went to Antarctica a year ago, so we were able to video conference with her to hear her thoughts, ask questions, and even see her warm coat and her husband's HUGE boots (size 17!) that took up an entire suitcase.
Ways to help at home:
- Find books or videos on continents or oceans.
- Have your child tell you all they know about the continent we have been studying.
- Create a story that takes place on a continent we have studied.
Word Study:
Students continue to participate in word study each day. Students write their sort once and have been able to choose their activity from a list! Please let me know if you have any questions about the sorts that are going home.
Writing:
Students continue to write different stories about their lives or fictional stories using pictures to help them develop their story. Students have been writing responses to prompts. For instance, they could choose to write about winning a million dollars or their best day ever!
We will begin writing poetry this week! I am so excited to give them a chance to explore a new writing style to spark more of their creativity.
Ways to help at home:
- All students should continue working on capitalization and punctuation within sentences.
- Give them a question to respond to in one paragraph.
- Write a rhyming poem!
Reading:
Students continue to read for approximately 40 minutes in class each day. At times, they read to me, read to a partner, or read independently. We continue to work on comprehension strategies.
We will review reading with prosody (expression, intonation, character voices, etc.) with our poetry unit. Students will "perform" for classmates once they've had a chance to practice. As you know, practice makes perfect!
Ways to help at home:
- As always, continue to have your child read between 20-30 minutes per day.
- Make predictions using events in your book and your schema.
- Read and reread poetry to improve prosody and build confidence!
We will welcome a special guest, Seth Michelson (Joaquin's dad), later this week. Joaquin talks about his dad who is a poet, so who better to teach us more about poetry than an actual poet? :) We are all very excited!
Math:
We continue to add larger numbers and discuss different strategies students use. I believe the discussions are helpful for most students so they can find a strategy that works best for them. Students use blocks, number lines and the expanded strategy to help them solve problems. Here are a few examples...
Ways to help at home:
- Ask your child how to play Collect $1.00!
- Continue to work with your child on telling time (we have been working on time to 5 minutes) and counting money.
- Continue to allow your child to work on ST Math at home, which will greatly build their number sense!
- Not many students are using Reflex Math, so please don't forget to build fact fluency at home.
Thank you for sharing about using ST Math at home - we also have new parent resources on our website at https://www.stmath.com/parent-math-resources
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