Peek at Our Week

This week marks the beginning of October and I am surprised at how fast time is moving! A couple quick things to keep in mind:

1. We go to the library this Thursday at 8am.
2. PTA Night Program is October 14th

As always everything we are doing is in this week's newsletter that went home. Click on the link below to grab this week's newsletter.
Class Newsletter September 29th 

What We Are Learning This Week

For math this week we will wrap up our unit on comparing numbers and writing numbers in expanded form. We will then continue on to skip counting by 5s and 10s forward and backwards. When in class we will not always start at 5 or 10. For example if counting by 5s I might start at 25 and have students continue counting on by 5s (30, 35, 40, 35, 50, 55, 60....) up to 100. 

Reading this week will be a review of all the skills that have been taught thus far this year. This includes 

• Main Idea: What is the Story about?
• Author's Purpose: Is the author writing to persuade, inform, or entertain? 
• Text Features: bold print, glossaries, electronic menus/icons (ex. links on a website)
• W Questions: Who, what, when, where, and why. Students need to think about these questions when reading. 
• Sequencing: Putting the events of a story in the order they happened.
• Cause and Effect: What action/event happened in a story and what caused it to happen.
• Using illustrations to determine information about the characters, setting, or plot.

For science we will continue our study exploring solids and liquids. Last week we focused on what a scientist is and how we need to be safe when completing science experiments. This week we will start to explore how a scientist makes predictions and what a liquid is. 

Benchmark Testing

This year a new kind of benchmark test is being given to all students in grades 1-5. This benchmark test is completed on a computer. Students will have to click on their answers and write short answer responses in a text box. We will be taking the reading benchmark test this week during our computer time (12:35-1:05). Students will take small parts of the test each day until the test is completed. They will take the math portion of the test next week October 6th-October 10th. 

Our Homework This Week

Our math homework this week has a copyright so I can not post it here but if you need an additional copy I can e-mail it to you just let me know if your child needs another copy.

Spelling/Phonics For The Week

Our spelling words for this week focus on the phonemes ou, or, er, ar, ir, oo, and ch. Five words will be introduced each day up until Wednesday. Thursday we will play a review game and Friday will be our spelling test. 

Have a great week and check out my recent post on our Maps and Communities unit.