Room 303 News 09-18-18

Weekly Updates and Reminders: 

• The final FAPEs (FineArts and P.E.) schedule is listed above.
• Daily folders (black) and gray reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.  We will be starting the daily reading logs next week.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.  This is a great way to start a conversation about learning if you review it with your child each evening.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.  
• Thank you to those families that attended curriculum night.  We had approximately 14 families out of 28 attend.  This was not as big as turn out in years past; however, we hope you all received the curriculum night information that was sent home the next day.  Should you have any questions, please feel free to email us. 
• Happy Birthday to Bailey Cockfield on August 27.  There are no September birthdays.
  
  

Math:

These past few weeks we accomplished our routine such as starting math workshop with checking homework together and asking questions to further understand the math skills practiced.  This is an important part of our day, for students begin to take ownership of their learning by looking at their homework responses to the answer key and understanding their mistake or asking questions if they cannot figure out why their answer is different.  Students also enjoyed receiving all their math tools such as rulers, calculators, and measuring tapes.  Students will complete a Beginning of the Year Assessment this week.  I will use the information to form small group instruction so that we can begin Math Workshop in the next few weeks.

Social Studies:

We will begin the unit, Michigan Government this week.  I will only teach Social Studies once a week while we have our Science kit.  Once the Science Kit goes back and we are waiting for the next kit, we will then switch our focus to Social Studies 4-5 days a week until the new kits arrive, which is usually a few weeks.  I believe this focuses our instruction and the students are not feeling as overwhelmed with subjects.

Science:

Students were so anxious to begin their hands-on experiments in groups of four.  They are natural scientists at heart!  We discussed what makes a great science team and all agreed it will take patience, collaboration, close observations, and respectful discussions.  Our focus this week was how water reacts to different surfaces.
        
We began the unit by doing a Visible Thinking Routine called, Chalk Talk.  This activity is a silent activity that provides all students the opportunity to reflect on what they know, and then share their thinking and wonderings while connecting to the thoughts of their classmates.  It was a great first week learning Science!

                

Word Study/Grammar:
This week in grammar, we are focusing on ending consonants and pronouns.  Their grammar packet is always due on Friday.


Writing: 

This week we started Writer’s Workshop. I gave the students an on-demand writing assessment to see what skills they have as writers.  We also began talking about some people, places, and things that are important to us and the students decorated the covers of their writer's notebooks to reflect that.  Next, we will be starting to think about ideas for our personal narrative writing pieces.

Reading: 

We started our first reading unit by looking at the Big Ideas.  We did this through the read aloud The Book of Gold.  
 
Ask your child to tell you all about it.  This unit, we will be talking all about how readers don’t just read books, but they build a reading LIFE.  We are working on our book selections and building our stamina to read for longer periods of time. We are off to a great start in reading and writing.  The students should have completed their first reading homework assignment last night.  They are due tomorrow.  We will start daily reading logs next week.