Mrs. G.'s Chalk Talk: November 15th

Dear Families,

This week on our team:

Reminders:

November 12-20: Book Fair

November 13: report cards sent home

November 17: Picture Retakes

November 19: half day of school with a 12:30 dismissal and Conferences from 1-4 and 5-7

November 23: Thanksgiving Feast (See note that was sent home on Thursday)

November 25-29: No school for Thanksgiving Break

Language Arts: This week in Reading Workshop, we continued to work on identifying character traits and focusing on using adjectives to describe characters. We read carefully in order to notice character changes throughout the text. Also, we analyzed characters so that we noticed the differences between traits and emotions. We read and reread some great books to discuss and write about some very interesting characters.

Word Work: In word work, we worked on the long /o/ sound including words with oa, and o-e and ow . It is very helpful to point these types of words out to your child when reading with him/her at home. Practice spelling some words with these patterns. Next week, we’ll work on words with the long /u/ sound.

Writing Workshop: This week, we continued to work on personal narratives while studying author’s craft. We read the books Rollercoaster and Whistling to find author's craft to try in our own writing. We’ve been working on taking our pieces through the writing process by revising and editing. Next week, we’ll continue writing personal narratives and studying mentor texts. Also, students have been doing lots of blogging and lots of writing from home! Everyone is having fun commenting and starting conversations with one another through our blogs!

Math: This past week, we continued to work on subtraction strategies, learning which strategies to use with different subtraction problems. Children were asked to figure out the best or most efficient way to solve a subtraction math problem. Some of the strategies included Counting Up, Counting Back, using Fact Families, Minus 0 and Minus 1, and Think Addition. Please work on any of the subtraction activities on IXL.

Science and Social Studies: This weekwe continued to work at our Maker Spaces. Mr. F. stopped by and worked with another group. We need small boxes for our next Maker project (think jewelry boxes and small shoe boxes or any small box). We also continued to learn about working together in teams. We did a STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) activity in teams and finished building chairs for a small stuffed animal. This chair had to be free standing and able to hold the animal without tipping over. Next week, we'll begin learning about Landforms and start to answer some of our wonderings by researching with our teams.