Fun times!

This past Friday, we had a visit from Mr. George Steele! He turned our classroom in to a NYS mammal museum!

http://georgesteele.webs.com/

Thank you to Ronan's dad for coming in for Mystery Reader!

Some notes for this upcoming week:

I think we are all looking forward to getting back to a "regular" schedule after the half day tomorrow. We will have a quiz on rounding and estimating both sums and differences this week and continue to practice adding and subtracting greater numbers. We began guided reading groups last week and I'm anxious to get them up and going again to focus on character traits.

This week in spelling is our review week. Your child brought home their spelling list that covers every spelling word they've had in units 1 - 4. Thursday they will be quizzed on these words again and Friday they'll bring home a "normal" spelling list for Unit 5.

Reminder: Picture day is Wednesday!!

October News

Many exciting things have been happening in our room...first of all, we planted Wisconsin Fast Plant seeds!!! We will watch the entire life cycle, which will take about 6 weeks.

If you're interested in learning more about our plants and watching videos, click HERE.

We have continued to learn various map skills in social studies and will begin to understand the difference between a state, country, and continent.

This week in reading we will begin our character study unit. We will focus on character traits and understand how characters learn and grow through their experiences.

We have been learning a lot about personal narratives and will continue this week on writing a great lead.

This week, we'll begin two new units. One will be on writing a paragraph and the other will be learning dictionary skills.


In math, we'll continue to work with rounding numbers to the tens and hundreds and begin to estimate sums and differences. We have finished the four weekly addition and subtraction fact quizzes. Results of those quizzes will be discussed at our parent teacher conferences beginning this week.
On Friday, I sent home a login for XTRA math. This is a useful tool that tracks student progress on their math facts and will individualize a program for each child. It takes about 3 minutes each time you log in and there is an app for it as well. I would like each child to try to use this resource a few times a week. We will continue to write practice math facts on our daily assignment pad, and I encourage using XTRA math as your practice. If you need another log in information sheet please let me know.

This week, Current Events will begin. A calendar was sent home 2 weeks ago for both October and November. Please use the current event websites listed on the sidebar of this blog as a resource for your child's article. If there is a video that accompanies the article please send it to me and we will view it together.

We have welcomed our first two mystery readers over the past two weeks! I have some openings left and if you weren't able to sign up the night of Open House you can do it when we have our conference together.

 Casey and her mom

Colin and his mom