September 20th

 Reading: Our focus text in our reading magazine for this week was titled, “Habitats Around the World”. A few skills that we worked on this week include: asking questions, determining the main topic and supporting details, and comparing and contrasting 2 passages with similar topics.

Our phonics lessons worked on the following skill: Open and closed syllables

Math: This week we continued focusing on finding efficient strategies to solve both addition and subtraction problems. We’ve been working on using number bonds, open number lines, and count on / count back strategies. We took our Mid-Unit 1 test, and our next lesson topic is data and graphing.

Class Meeting: We love learning about our classmates during our daily class meetings. On Wednesdays we think it is fun to have the topic of “Would You Rather Wednesdays.” Our teacher leader records our responses and then shares the results at the end of our meeting.

Science: This week we started our first science unit, “A Home for a Penguin!”  In this unit we learn about the 3 states of matter, properties of materials, and insulators and conductors.  This week we have been learning about ways to describe and classify materials by their observable properties. 

Writing: We began our first informational writing piece.  We are all writing about the grasslands.  We have learned about the grasslands in Africa, North America, and Australia and have written notes from a text and a video on the topic.  We then determined subtopics that we will have for our 2 body paragraphs on the Grasslands (Savannas and Prairies).

We visited the library this week for a lesson with Mrs. Levine. The students are welcome to bring back their library books any day of the week so they can exchange them for new ones. We have even been learning how to order library books from our ipads. After using our ipads to order a book from our school library it shows up on the student’s desk. It’s like Amazon for our classroom! 

Our class celebration was so much fun! The students each got to share with the class about the item they brought in. Then we took a little time to play. :)