11/30 to 12/4

Happy December!

I hope you and your family had a nice long weekend. This week I will be out Thursday and Friday with a guest teacher.

Spelling words this week:

• only
• move
• right
• because
• together

Upcoming Events:

11/30-12/12: Canned Food Drive

12/2: Culvers Gift Card Orders Due

12/5: Miss Wittmann's Wedding

12/11: No School

12/15: Pajama Day

12/15: Virtual Family Night 6-7

Math We are starting a new unit in math. This unit will have students measuring, learning about shapes (their sides, angels, and names). This is a fun unit for students. We will continue to do warm ups and reviews of money, multi-digit addition, and story problems, too! Reading In reading we continue our work in nonfiction reading. Students have spent a lot of time learning about keywords in nonfiction text. We can learn a keyword and it’s meaning from the clues the author leaves in the text features, background knowledge, and more. We will start to dig a little deeper into comprehension: thinking about how the information across the book is connected, comparing how one author versus another author writes about the same topic, and how nonfiction readers talk about their new learning. Writing As we continue our nonfiction writing we will continue to think about the audience, adding more detail for the things they want to know. We will work on goal setting and some editing and revising work too. Researchers Workshop This week in Researchers’ Workshop students will explore centers around plants. They will be thinking about what plants need to survive? They will compare plants and their needs (if they need lots of water, sun, etc). In centers students will learn and practice collecting information. Students love the weeks we go into centers because they get to lead their learning in many ways.

A few photos from last week:

11/23-11/24

Happy Thanksgiving!

I will keep this blog short and sweet like this week! We will have a math test this week on two digit addition problems and counting coins. 

I hope you have a wonderful and safe long weekend. I am very thankful for all of the students I get to work with and having a school that has such an amazing partnership between families and teachers.

Spelling Words This Week:

• too
• two
• also
• very
• would
• could
• should

Upcoming Events:

11/24: Book Orders Due, last order before holidays! Can order online at: https://clubs.scholastic.com/home our class code is QJMYM

11/25-11/27: No School

11/30-12/12: Canned Food Drive

12/2: Culvers Gift Card Orders Due

12/5: Miss Wittmann's Wedding

12/11: No School

12/15: Pajama Day

12/15: Virtual Family Night 6-7

11/16-11/20

 Happy Monday!

It was nice to have the opportunity to connect at conferences. Please feel free to email with any follow up questions or concerns. Thank you for all you do for our school and your child's learning.

I wanted to remind you that we are back on track with new spelling words each week. We took a break when we were learning virtually. But have been writing them in our assignment notebooks each Monday. On Fridays we do a quick test to see if we are ready to put the words on our word wall. The words this week are: again, against, sure, please, knew, know, always, and once.

Upcoming Events:

11/13: Square One Art Orders Due (turn them in ASAP if you did want to order!)

11/17: Virtual Conferences

11/20: Early Release at 11:26 AM

11/24: Book Orders Due, last order before Christmas!

11/25-11/27: No School

12/5: Miss Wittmann's Wedding

11/30-12/12: Canned Food Drive

12/11: No School

Photos from the last few weeks:

We read the book The Worry Jar and decided to have one for our classroom. This unique school year can be filled worries. Sometimes its nice to put our worries in our jar and let the jar hold onto the worry for us!

We took advantage of those warm November days!

We dropped "seeds" from chairs to see if the design would avoid the "zone of darkness" or the shade of the tree.

We read inside of a rain forest for our first day of non-fiction reading.

11/9 to 11/13

 Hello,

Wow, it has been such nice weather lately! I hope you've had time to enjoy it. This week is a busy one! There are a few important things to note for upcoming events. Picture retake day is on Wednesday. This is for students that have not been able to get their picture done yet. Or for students that their parents contacted me and let me know they would like them to be redone. If you would like them to be redone please let me know before Wednesday!

We also have conferences this week. If you have not signed up yet please do so today or tomorrow. Here is the link to sign up:

Link to sign up for conferences

And fill out this survey either digitally or fill out the paper copy I sent out last week to help me guide our conference time. I am excited for the opportunity to talk to you about your child's progress!

Survey Link

Lastly, I will be sending home a Scholastic book order today. If you want books before the holidays this is your chance to get some! You can also order online: https://clubs.scholastic.com/home

Our class code is QJMYM

Upcoming Events:

11/11: Picture Retake Day or Wear Red White and Blue for Veteran's Day

11/12: Virtual Conferences

11/13: Square One Art Orders Due

11/17: Virtual Conferences

11/20: Early Release

11/24: Book Orders Due

What we are up to this week:

Reading

We are headed into our new unit….Becoming Experts. This is a unit that is focused around Nonfiction Reading.  We will study how nonfiction text is written, how we read it, decoding strategies, how to infer word meaning for expert words, and how to collect new information in longer texts.  We will encourage students to read about topics they are interested in.  Students love this unit because they love to know about the world around them.  

I want to encourage you to continue to read with your child, even as they continue to gain so many independent reading skills. Reading with your child is a perfect way to build in time for comprehension work. 

Writing

Along with Nonfiction Reading we will be diving into Nonfiction Writing. Students will get to write about things they know a lot about.  They will become the experts who teach others about things they know.  

At home you can talk about things your child is an expert at.  When they are curious or share a story you could say: “Wow, you know a lot about that...you could write about that.”

Math

We continue our work with place value and adding multi-digit numbers.  Last week students were taught a few different strategies to add multi-digit numbers together.  The idea in learning many strategies is that students can use whichever strategy works best for them.  This week I will be sending a practice sheet home with your students as we are nearing the end of the unit and will take our Unit 2 Assessment early next week. 

Researchers Workshop

We are starting our Unit on Plants. The unit matches our Animal Unit with the same goals:

--How do different plants and animals survive in different environments?

--How do humans solve problems by mimicking plants and animals?