Weekly Update

Good morning. I hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend. I can't believe that December is already here!? Just a reminder that will be having a Frosty Fun Run tomorrow at school. The Fun Run will start at 2:00. Please be sure that your child is dresses appropriately for the weather and that they wear sneakers tomorrow. Thanks! It should be a fun afternoon.

It was another busy week in our classroom. In reader's workshop we started our new non-fiction unit. The students are reading non-fiction articles in their guided reading groups and are required to read 2 to 3 non-fiction books during independent reading. We started the week out by reviewing non-fiction text features and why they are important. We also used text features to make predictions about what information we thought we would learn about in the article/book. Students learned different  note taking strategies to use with non-fiction text. (This skill will be very useful in our next writing unit; a research based argumentative piece of writing.) Students practiced paraphrasing chunks of non-fiction text. We ended the week by talking about the difference between a main idea and a supporting detail.

Independent Reading

 

                                                           
                                                               

Students Look for Text Features 

                                                                                                    

In math we continued with our division unit. This week we focused on dividing a 4 digit dividend by a 2 digit divisor. We also worked on solving word problems that involve multi digit division problems. We will be taking an assessment on this unit this upcoming week. After long division we will begin our unit on adding and subtracting fractions.

Students Play a Division Game

In Writer's Workshop we continued our poetry unit. Students wrote new poems for their poetry anthology this week. Students wrote a poem about a childhood memory using sensory language, students wrote a haiku poem about something in their surroundings, and a poem about all the places poetry hides. Students will begin revising their poems this upcoming week. 

An invitation  to our first Writer's Celebration will be coming home this upcoming week. Be sure to be on the look out for your invitation.

In science this week, students conducted experiments to see what makes the pitch of a sound change. Students concluded that pitch is related to how fast the molecules are vibrating; the faster the vibrations the higher the pitch will be. We will be having a engineering design challenge this week. Students will work in pairs to create noise reducing headphones. We will also be starting the part of this unit related to light this upcoming week.

Have a great Sunday!