November 18th

Reading & Writing: This week in our unit on the government we read a historical fiction piece on Betsy Ross, and a nonfiction passage on our government’s laws.  Our focus has been on retelling the key events, determining the important vs. unimportant information, and main topic and key details.  

In writing we are in the starting phase of writing an informational piece.  Each student chose a government worker to research.  They could choose from one of the military branches, post workers, teachers, park rangers, firefighters, or police officers.  Then, every student has been researching and taking notes on the daily job and tools of their worker.  We have begun to draft our introduction paragraph and our first body paragraph.  We will continue this writing in the following weeks. 

 

Math: This week we finished lesson 9 where students have been solving 1 and 2 step word problems while continuing to use their skills in adding and subtracting 2- digit numbers. Next up we will be learning how to solve math problems involving money. Please consider practicing counting coins at home with your child. Thank you!

Social Studies: We are researching government workers, and then we are going to create a fact sheet to share what we have learned. A class presentation will follow, and I can't wait to see what the students create!

Second Steps Lesson: We learned about the importance of empathy.

Class Celebration: Bring a Toy From Home

November 11th

  

Reading & Writing:

We began unit 3, and the topic is Government at Work. We read a passage about smoke jumpers. While reading, we identified important and unimportant details in the story. We also talked about identifying the main topic of each paragraph in the story. In writing we are starting to talk about how to write an informational piece about different government jobs. 

Math: 

We wrapped up Lesson 8 which was about using both addition and subtraction with regrouping of 2 digit numbers to solve word problems. Lesson 9 continues our work on two-digit addition and subtraction while exploring more word problems. We will continue to work on the addition and subtraction with regrouping strategies over the next few weeks.

Social Studies:

We started to talk about the three branches of government. We learned about the roles of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. This all ties in nicely with our current reading unit.

We also learned about Veteran’s Day, and we made posters to display during our Veteran’s Day Parade. 

 

November 2nd

Reading & Writing: 

We continued to use the story of Yeh-Shen to practice determining the central message or theme to a text. We read another mentor text called Great Girls Contest. The children made text to self connections as we read. Students used what they learned last week about Yeh-Shen’s character traits to begin drafting an opinion piece. We are learning what should be included when writing strong opinion introduction, body, and conclusion paragraphs. Long i is our new focus for phonics instruction. 

Math: 

We wrapped up Lesson 7 on subtracting two-digit numbers. Lesson 8 continues our work on two-digit subtraction by looking at a variety of word problems, including those with missing addends. Learning how to regroup often takes lots of repetition and practice. We will continue to work on addition and subtraction with regrouping over the next few weeks. 

Other:

We had our counseling lesson with Mrs. Maddock, enjoyed some STEM time, and we completed a Second Step lesson.