Oct 21, 2015

Busy weeks are ahead!
Today and tomorrow after school we have Parent/Teacher Interviews. Thank you to those parents who signed up! I am excited to meet with you.
Important things to remember: 
-picture forms are due back to school on THURSDAY OCTOBER 22, 2015. Even if you would like retakes, please send the form back.
-we will be having a dress-up day next Friday and walking through Salem Manor (Senior Center across the street). In the morning will be our class party. For those who signed up to bring items, I will send out a sign-up sheet for you to sign up (this will be sent via email).

Language Arts
We are doing Reading Comprehension every morning. The students are getting much more confident with understanding what they are reading.
Daily 5 is going really well. The students love the 3 parts we have started (read to self, listen to read, and work on writing) and we will be introducing 'Word Work' next week.
In phonics, we are developing our understanding and confidence of short vowel sounds. Next we will be working with long vowel sounds.
Our writing is developing too! We have learned about two types of writing: expository/informative and narrative. We are exploring the differences of the two types: why the author writes this way, what the story looks like, what each sentence contains, the importance of a title, etc.

Math
We have wrapped up our Patterns unit and are starting to review. There will be a test next week on Wednesday October 28.
On Monday we looked at money (specifically, coins) and what each coin is worth. We then moved on to adding money together and figuring out 'how much money is in Miss Kruse's wallet'. This is a great chance to work with your child when you go to the store or are finding money around the house. Ask your child: how much is that worth? if I had all these coins together, how much would I have?

Science
Magnets are the topic of conversation lately. The students got to test various items to see if they were magnetic or not. Items such as a pop can, juice box, eraser, pencil, paper clip, money, chalk, nails, and a twist tie were among the items. Our next experiment will be to see how many paperclips a magnet can hold. We will be talking about predictions and observations as well.

Social
We are at the tail end of our Mapping unit. Our discussion lately has been around directions (compass rose, left, right) and the continents. The students are very interested in the continents and what is on each continent (ex. variety of animals, weather, geography, etc). The conversation has even led into tectonic plates!!