Week of November 2nd!

 Whoa - its already November! So happy to be still in the classroom with your kiddos!

Last week we spent the short week reviewing much of the content that was taught during the week I was out. Reviewing the lessons seemed to really help students therefore we will be moving along on Monday, Nov. 2nd!

It was so awesome to see the students in their costumes on Wednesday. We had a fun day! The students took their Math Quick Quizzes (which will be graded and sent home next week), we wrote Halloween opinion pieces, discovered the topic and main idea of nonfiction Halloween related articles, and celebrated in the afternoon with snacks and the movie Onward.

Here's some of the students as they were writing on Wednesday: 

HOMEWORK UPDATE: Students will NOT be using a paper calendar to write down their homework from now on. All homework is now listed on Google Calendar. Parents, you should've received an invitation to the calendar on Thursday, October 29th. If not, please let me know asap. 

Daily Health Screening: Please see this link for daily health screening. Parents should go through each of these questions with their child before the start of each school day.

Upcoming Events:

November 3: Red, White, and Blue Day

November 11: Picture Retake Day

November 12: Parent Teacher Conferences (4:00pm - 7:30pm)

November 17: Parent Teacher Conferences (4:00pm - 7:30pm)

November 25: No School

November 26: Happy Thanksgiving! No School

November 27: No School

Curriculum Update:

Reading: We are continuing with our nonfiction unit. Last week we reviewed previous minilessons and focused heavily on identifying the main idea and topic of nonfiction texts. Students spent some time reading a variety of articles and working in small groups to practice finding main ideas and topics. We will continue working on this as it is pretty tricky for most of the students. We will then launch into a whole class research project where students will work to plan, synthesize, read a variety of texts, and grow research based ideas.

Writing: We are finished writing opinion pieces our collections and will move on to reviews! Students will be writing reviews to persuade others. They will learn how to hook the reader, provide convincing reasons, interviewing, and making sure their writing is easy to read by others.

Math: Student's took their Quick Quiz 2 for Unit 2 on Wednesday, October 28th. These quizzes will be coming home early next week. We will begin the week by beginning to multiply two digits by two digits and continue throughout the week by practicing this multiplication using the models and methods we've already learned. The Quick Quiz 3 will take place on Friday, November 6th.

Word Study: We finished Unit 2 and took our Unit 2 test on Monday, October 26th. The students seemed to really grasp the content taught within the unit. The unit focused a lot on consonant and vowel suffixes and the exceptions within those. We will begin Unit 3 on Monday which will focus on the vowel-consonant-e syllable. This unit is very short and students will be taking the Unit 3 test by Friday, November 6th!

Content: We've been spending quite some time learning about the different types of energy. We will now move into inquiry groups where students will work independently and with a team to learn more about one type of energy. Students picked their top three choices of energy topics and were placed in groups. For three weeks students will study this topic and build up to a final presentation that they will share with their team to the class! I'm very excited for this!