September 21 - 25

It is hard to believe we have finished our third week of school. The students are starting to settle into our routine nicely. I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful cooler weather. I know I am. :-) Here is a little peek at what we did this week.

Writing- This week we read The Best Story by Eileen Spinelli. This is a wonderful book when talking about writing from your heart. The little girl in the book wanted to write a story but could not decide what to write about. She learned that the best kind of stories come from your heart. We also talked about where writers get their ideas from. We looked at two master writers Jane Yolen who wrote Owl Moon and Angela Johnson who wrote The Leaving Morning. I read the first couple pages of each book and we talked about where these authors got their ideas from. We learned that these stories were meaningful and important to these authors because they wrote from their heart. We will use these two stories as a resource and mentor text when we write our own stories (narratives). As an extension to the books, I asked each student to think of happy, sad, scared times in their life. They filled out a graphic organizer to help them write down these times to help them begin to brainstorm possible narrative topics.

Reading- We are improving our reading stamina each day. This week we talked about what our reading workshop will look like. First I will teach a mini-lesson, then students will have independent silent reading to practice that skill, and then there will be some time for students to share. We also talked about some problems that may come up during independent reading like what happens if you have to use the bathroom or a friend is making noise and distracting you. Another thing we talked about is how to distinguish between a book that is too hard, just right or too easy and the three finger rule. A just right book is a book that you can read at a smooth pace,  the reading sounds like you are talking, and you can understand what you are reading. A book is too hard if the reading is choppy, hard to understand, the reader stopped many times to figure out unknown words and does not make sense.

Math- We continued unit 1 this week. We learned how to compare addition and subtraction, read stories about separating and read stories about comparing. We will work on some problem solving next week and then take our unit 1 test. We will then begin unit 2 towards the middle of next week. Also this week students took a placement test to help me learn some more information about them as math students.

Social Studies- On Monday we watched a Brainpop video on community helpers. We learned that there are many types of community helpers. The students were very eager and excited to share what types of community workers you all are! We also read a Scholastic News magazine about Johnny Appleseed.

Spelling- We started spelling this week. On Thursday the students took a pretest on the AG word family. After the pretest students marked which words they got wrong on the pretest. Then on Friday they used any of the words they got wrong on their pretest to put on their own individualized spelling list. Some of their words also came from a list of AG words the students thought of as a class. All students spelling lists came home today. They are all individualized and no two students have the same exact list. The students should study their spelling list which is on notebook paper and be prepared for their spelling test on Wednesday. Please feel free to email with any questions you may have.

Don't forget:

1. A healthy snack for your child each day.
2. School Pictures are Monday September 28th at 10:30.
3. Check your child's take home folder each day.
4. On September 29th at 9:10 we will have a class breakfast. All parents are invited!

Mrs. Salmonsen