Weekly Update: December 3rd-7th

Lemme

Leopards

Hi Parents,

As I am writing this, I am seeing the first snowflakes of this winter fall from the sky. My boys are thrilled about this as they have been talking about it for weeks. I hope you are having a great weekend!

Language Arts:

This past week students read the informational text, Aero and Officer Mike. Students practiced the comprehensions skills of summarizing and determining author's purpose. We discussed the four main reasons authors write; to entertain, to persuade, to express feelings/thoughts, and to inform. We also spent large/small group time summarizing parts of the text we were reading. When summarizing, we focus on telling the important parts of the text in our own words. We also differentiate the difference between retelling and summarizing.

Grammar and Writing:
This week's focus is an extension of last week's subject-verb agreement.  We are now applying our learning to pronouns and verbs.

We also focused on the prefixes im- and in- which mean not. It was important for students to see that a prefix can help us determine the meaning of unknown/new words.

Examples: incomplete-not complete    imperfect-not perfect

Spelling: This past weeks' spelling words had the /är/ sound spelled with ar and the /ôr/ sound spelled with the letters or or ore.

Math: Students will be taking their Unit 5 Math Progress Check on Wednesday, December 12th. Students should be bringing home a review sheet on Monday, December 10th. The challenge this unit has been students learning the place value of decimals. This is a concept that we will come back to again throughout the rest of the school year. 

Science: This past week students observed surface tension by seeing how many drops of water could fit on the surface of a penny. We also observed what effect soapy water and salt water has on surface tension, learning that soapy water breaks the barrier and salt water has little to no effect. Students also made their own versions of a thermometer (pictures to come) and watched what happened as their "thermometer" was submerged in hot and cold water.

Reminder: We increased the reading log minutes to 15 minutes a night for a goal of 300 minutes a month. Thanks for your support with this at home, I appreciate it!