October 26th

Reading: We finished up our second unit in reading this week by reading the poem, “Since Hanna Moved Away”. The students learned about figurative language and practiced finding examples of similes and hyperbole used in the poem. We also enjoyed having two guest readers in our class this week to read us books from the Stories to Service program. Students were able to hear Last Stop on Market Street and Sofia Valdez, Future Prez. We wrapped up the week by reading Grace for President. Then we compared Grace and Thomas to help us decide who we should cast our votes for. 

Writing: We finished writing our opinion piece on Yeh Shen this week by completing the revising and editing steps of the writing process. Then, students reflected upon their writing and rated themselves on how well they are understanding the elements of opinion writing. We also wrote a short opinion piece about which character, Grace or Thomas, from the book Grace for President should win the election.

Math: This week in math we learned about 2-digit subtraction strategies. Students are using base ten blocks, traditional stacking and regrouping, and open number lines to complete a variety of subtraction problems.  

Social Studies: We continued to learn about symbols of the United States this week, including the Statue of Liberty, the bald eagle, the White House, and Liberty Bell. We also read the book, Grace for President to learn about how the election process works. Then the students participated in a mock election to decide whether to vote for Grace or Thomas, who were the characters from the book.

October 17th

Fall Party Fun: Thank you so much to everyone who came and helped out with our Fall Party! We all had a wonderful time!

Reading: Our focus this week has been on retelling a story and determining the central message and being able to support our central message with evidence from the text.  We read “Yeh-Shen” and “The Great Girls Contest” which is a story from our reading magazine. 

Writing: We continued writing our opinion piece on Yeh Shen this week by writing an introduction, providing two reasons with supporting evidence, and a conclusion.  Prior to this week students were tasked with determining if they thought Yeh Shen was a positive or negative character.  We then began revising our writing pieces.  Next week we will edit and finish up our opinion pieces. 

Math: This week in math we took our 2-digit addition quick check and started 2-digit subtraction.  We will continue learning 2-digit subtraction strategies next week.  

Social Studies: We started our first social studies unit this week!  Our topic is United States Symbols.  This week we learned about the Pledge of Allegiance. We will continue with this next week.

Kindness Walk: We enjoyed participating in the kindness walk in celebration of Unity Week!

October 11th

Math: 

We have been reviewing key concepts from unit 1 which include strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems and graphing. We enjoyed surveying our classmates to collect data about favorite types of candy. Once the data was collected the students created bar graphs to represent their findings. 

Reading: 

This week we read a story called Yeh-Shen. Then we practiced identifying character traits to tell about the main character, and we practiced retelling the important parts of a story including the story elements. We also worked on describing how characters respond to major events and challenges. Our phonics lessons focused on long e vowel team syllable patterns: ee, ea, e, e_e, y, ey, i

Writing: 

We have been working on learning how to write to a text-based prompt that focuses on an opinion essay. The students have completed their planning while using a graphic organizer to share their findings about character traits that best describe Yeh-Shen. They have formulated their opinion, decided on two character traits, and they located evidence from the passage to support their thinking. 

Science: 

Our class worked in small groups to create a prototype of a zoo penguin habitat. The students tested out different materials to see which materials would serve as good insulators. After their prototypes were constructed we tested them out by placing a penguin (ice cube) into their habitat which was placed under a heat lamp. We recorded our observations, and we had a lot of fun!