October 14-17

ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REMINDERS:

Please remember to send back the conference sign up sheet by WEDNESDAY!  It is first come, first serve so be sure to send it back as soon as possible.  If I do not hear from you by Wednesday, I will assign you a time.

Homework packets are due on THURSDAY!  Please remind your child to put it in their packet in their backpack on Wednesday evening.  No homework packet = no free choice Friday!

Mrs. Thibodeau will be visiting us again on Friday.  George and Kelso should also be coming to teach us!

Russell School is supporting the GNG High School Spirit Challenge!  We will be collecting non-perishable food items to donate to the Good Shepard Food Bank from now until October 29.  Money donations are also accepted.  $1.00 = 5 pounds of food!  

THIS WEEK IN...

Phonics:  We are working with the long and short /o/ sound.  Our focus words are:  box, fox, dog, lock, pot, cone, hope, rose, poke, and rope.

Spelling:  This week we will focus on Unit 2.  The words are:  which, their, said, if and do.  We will practice spelling these words correctly and also using them correctly in a sentence.

Vocabulary:  Our new words are:  settled, wrinkled, practiced, cuddle, favorite, and patient.  We’ll define these words and build connections to them.  Then, we’ll search for them in the short story called “My New Home” by Miguel Vasquez.

Comprehension:  This week we will be focusing on making and confirming predictions.  A prediction is a reasonable guess about what will happen in the story.  In order to make a good prediction, readers use the text, pictures, and what they already know.  When you confirm your prediction, you read on to find out whether the prediction you made was correct.  We’ll practice this skill while we read My Name is Yoon by Helen Recorvits.

Grammar:  This week we will focus on quotation marks.  Quotation marks are used at the beginning and end of what a person says.  

Writing:  We will begin our “Harvest Time How To” stories.  Team Howard will pick a harvest time activity to teach someone else how to do.  Ideas might be something like “How to Pick the Perfect Pumpkin” or “How to Go Trick or Treating”.  Using the words first, next, then, and last, students will write the steps for their harvest time activity.  

Scholastic News:  To go along with Columbus Day, we’ll be reading the article about finding the Santa Maria.  The Santa Maria was one of Columbus’ ships.  It sank and no one saw it for 500 years!  When we finished reading the article, we will use a map that shows where Columbus sailed in 1492 to help us answer some questions.

Read Aloud:  We will finish our adventure with Charlotte and Wilbur this week.  As a fun culminating activity, Team Howard will get to pretend to be Charlotte and write words in a web.  Students will think about a positive word that they think describes themselves.  They will then use glitter and glue to spell the word and add it to our web of adjectives that will be hanging in the hallway.  Be sure to check it out on your way to your parent/teacher/student conference!

Math:  We are now fully immersed into the world of shapes!  This week, we will focus on identifying the following shapes:  triangles, squares, rectangles, rhombi, trapezoids, pentagons, hexagons, and cubes.  We’ll also practice identifying sides, angles, and faces of shapes.  We’ll do this by playing “Swat the Shape!” where we use fly swatters to swat the shape that is being described.  Later in the week, we’ll practice drawing 2D shapes from a given set of attributes such as the number of angles or number of sides.  During Team Howard’s independent work time, students will be practicing their individual geometry learning goals through IXL, activities, worksheets, games, and challenge activities.  Challenge activities include working with 3D shapes (recognizing them and identifying attributes such as faces, edges, and vertices), building a tower using 5-10 geoblocks and making a 3D drawing of it, making a book to teach others about 2D and 3D shapes, and mystery shapes where students have to use their knowledge from other math topics such as money, place value, addition, and subtraction to make and name a mystery shape.

We also reviewed telling time to the hour and half hour with a fun activity.  We created our own pocket books and organized 15 clocks by clocks that tell time to the hour and clocks that tell time to the half-hour.  Before we could sort them though, we needed to read the analog time on the clocks and write the digital time.  

Science:  To celebrate our spider reports, we will be watching The Magic School Bus Spins a Web!  In this episode, Miss Frizzle’s class is on a mission to catch a giant praying mantis.  The students will learn about the many ways different spiders catch their prey.  Using their knowledge of spiders, Miss Frizzle’s class will have to decide the best way to catch the preying mantis.