Happy Monday! Phew~we are finished with our 50 State Challenge….and they all did great! They learned a lot about our 50 states in addition to where they are located and their capitals. They now have enough knowledge of the land, people, and culture to build on as we learn about Native American tribes, Colonial USA and the American Revolution this year! They also developed some strong skills to locate information from the text and study skills to memorize. There’s a lot to celebrate!
And, speaking of celebration…they have earned their first behavior reward! 20 awards filled up our chart (which is 400 amazing individual great things they did to earn it!) I’m in discussion with them now about what they want and I’ll reach out to let you know what they decide. We also will be having a harvest party next Tuesday. Our room mother may have reached out already regarding this, although I may take over the planning for this. She or I will send out an email later this week outlining what we will need/do on this fun day! The kids will be allowed to wear a costume, as described in Mrs. Fowler’s weekly messages.
Reading: We are working on non-fiction reading strategies-specifically focusing on Main Idea and Compare and Contrast text structures. Students are reading from a wide variety of non-fiction texts to practice gathering information from books written with these structures.
Writing: We finished up our “Part of Speech” writing, where students used a thesaurus to find adjectives, verbs and adverbs that describe a mood/create an image in their readers’ minds. Now, they are using those skills this week to begin their first, “Convince the Class.” In this activity, they are using research skills to find information about a unique or interesting animal. Their job is to use exciting word choices and specific researched facts to support a claim of their choice. We build on our non-fiction writing skills throughout our non-fiction writing unit until they are writing a 5 paragraph essay with an introduction, body and conclusion statement.
Science: This week we begin our first science unit: Ecosystems! We will learn about food webs/chains, decomposers and how plants get their energy.
Math: We finished testing Unit 2 (Adding and Subtracting Decimals) and are beginning topic 3 Multiplying whole numbers this week.
I am enjoying meeting with you all at parent conferences! Please keep in touch if you ever have any questions or concerns.
Have a wonderful week,
Lisa
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