Wishing everyone who celebrates Christmas a very merry one. I hope that everyone is enjoying their break and spending lots of time with family and friends. Enjoy, everyone!
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Time is certainly flying by!!
Reminder: Heritage Doll, Family Tree, Interview, Oral Report Due dates are coming up FAST! The doll and family tree are due TOMORROW, Dec. 16. Oral reports are due on Wednesday, Dec. 17th. These due dates are true deadlines--even if a student is not in school, their reports still need to be turned in on time. If necessary, you can drop the reports/dolls/family trees off at the office or send them with a classmate or sibling. Homework This week's homework, in addition to the daily minimum of ten minutes reading each day, is to finish and PRACTICE your student's family heritage project. Even though there is no math homework, I strongly suggest spending a few minutes each day counting miscellaneous groups of quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies up to two or three dollars. Class Celebration This Friday afternoon we are having a winter celebration, well earned by the class! Hopefully, you have received Mrs. Arietta's invitation to SignUpGenius.com to donate items for the party. Please donate something if you can. We still need: • 1 bag of mini-marshmallows • 30 regular sized candy canes • 2 bags of Hershey's Kisses • 30 tall, clear cellophane party bags • 30 large, white Styrofoam cups • 1 packet of address labels • 30 store bought round sugar cookies, plain, no frosting • 2 cans of vanilla frosting • Colorful sprinkles, mini M&Ms, red hots, or other decorations for the cookies • 30 snowman theme or light blue plates and napkins A big thank you to the Ezenwa and Bernat families for already sending in their donations! Celebration of Learning
Invitations went out last week for the Celebration of Learning Accelerated Reader awards. Congratulations to all of you who met your AR point goals with at least 85% accuracy on the quizzes: Alex, Jeremiah, Brandon, Christian, Matt, Ryan, Josh, Justin, Mareia, Nick, Valeria, Makenna, Kailani, Christine, Sebastian, Mia, Daniela, Genesis, and Alan! The assembly will be on Wednesday, December 10 at 11:00 a.m. in the multi-purpose room. Holiday Boutique Our day to shop at the annual Holiday Boutique is Thursday, December 11. If you would like to allow your student to shop for friends and family, please send their money in the envelope I sent home last week. If you lost the envelope, you can use any envelope. This is a very popular event each year. Family Math Night Family Math Night was a great way to enjoy some cool math activities with your entire family. I was excited to see Mareia, Nick, Makenna, and Daniela there along with their families. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Class Celebration Our wonderful room parent, Mrs. Arietta, is putting together a party for the class to enjoy the in the afternoon on December 19. The party will be a winter theme so all of our students can enjoy it and participate in all the activities. Please think about volunteering your time to help that afternoon--Mrs. Arietta, Mrs. Quitt's Cool Kids, and I all appreciate your time and help. The class has been working very hard and has earned this special treat. Reminder: Heritage Doll, Family Tree, Interview, Oral Report Due dates are coming up FAST! The doll and family tree are due on Dec. 16. Oral reports are due on the 17th. These due dates are true deadlines--even if a student is not in school, their reports still need to be turned in on time. If necessary, you can drop the reports/dolls/family trees off at the office or send them with a classmate or sibling. Social Studies Vocabulary: See last week's entry for key words. Reading Comprehension Skills Main Idea/Details - what is the passage/paragraph/book mostly about? What are some details to support the main idea? Author's Purpose - why did the author write the story, text, or letter? To entertain? To inform? To teach a lesson? Compare and Contrast - what are the similarities and differences between two texts or stories about the same subject? Students need to be able to show this using a double-bubble thinking map. See last week's entry for an example. Writing Beginning narrative writing. Students must be able to write a personal narrative including important details and description in an orderly sequence of events. The narrative must be written in the first person and must include the setting, problem, wish, or goal, at least three events leading to a resolution, and, of course, the resolution. We will be focusing on description and events this week. Language/Phonics: R-controlled syllables. A vowel changes its pronunciation when followed by "bossy R." Examples: car, letter, curb, third, cord, etc. Adjectives. Students should be able to identify adjectives in stories and texts, as well as generate appropriate adjectives for their writing. Adverbs. Students should be able to identify adverbs in stories and texts, as well as generate appropriate adverbs for their writing. Syllables. Students should be able to divide words into syllables based on Closed, Open, Vowel-consonant-silent e, Consonant-le, and R-controlled patterns. Rearranging sentences. Students should be able to rearrange sentences for variety. For example: "Yesterday in the library, the boy found two wonderful non-fiction books about dinosaurs," can be rearranged to become, "The boy found two wonderful non-fiction books about dinosaurs in the library yesterday." Math Finishing Unit 3. We will be assessing Unit 3 at the end of the week. Depending on our progress, I may push the assessment to the beginning of next week. Then, we will begin Unit 4, which focuses on different varieties of coins adding up to 100 and introduces ungrouping tens. This leads us to subtraction of two digit numbers with and without regrouping, rounding to the nearest ten, and estimating using rounding. Parent Conferences. Thank you SO much for supporting your student by coming to parent conferences to discuss your child's academic progress. Remember, you do not have to wait for parent conferences to speak to me. If you have any questions or concerns, please email me. If possible, I will answer your question via email. If you prefer, just let me know and we can make an appointment to speak together in person. Important! Please send back the signature portion of the family heritage, heritage doll, and family tree project.. These were sent home on Friday, November 21. (I've only received 3 so far!) Social Studies Vocabulary: Primary Source - an eyewitness account of an event, such as a photograph or letter Secondary Source - something that gives you information about an event after that event took place, such as most newspaper and magazine articles, encyclopedias, history books Artifact - an object made and used by people, such as clothing, medals, ceramics Document - an important paper, such as a birth certificate or letter Reading Comprehension Skills: Main Idea/Details - what is the passage/paragraph/book mostly about? What are some details to support the main idea? Author's Purpose - why did the author write the story, text, or letter? To entertain? To inform? To teach a lesson? Compare and Contrast - what are the similarities and differences between two texts or stories about the same subject? Students need to be able to show this using a double-bubble thinking map. See below.  Writing:
Continuing opinion writing. Students must state an opinion about the given topic, a reason for their opinion, an elaboration on the reason, another reason and elaboration, and end with a restatement of their opinion in a different way than the topic sentence. To earn a "3" all of this must be included in a coherent, organized fashion using complete sentences. To earn a "4" students must use beyond grade level vocabulary, more complex sentence structure, more reasons/elaborations. Beginning narrative writing. Students must be able to write a personal narrative including important details and description in an orderly sequence of events. The narrative must be written in the first person and must include the setting, problem, wish, or goal, at least three events leading to a resolution, and, of course, the resolution. Language/Phonics: R-controlled syllables. A vowel changes its pronunciation when followed by "bossy R." Examples: car, letter, curb, third, cord, etc. Verbs. Students should be able to identify present and past tense verbs in a sentence, paragraph, and/or story. They should be able to generate appropriate verbs in their writing. Plurals. Students should be able to make regular and irregular plurals in their everyday writing. Examples: toy, toys; leaf, leaves; bench, benches; pony, ponies; deer, deer; child, children. Math: Continuing Unit 3, Lengths and Shapes. We are continuing our study of 2- and 3-dimensional shapes. Students should be able to define and recognize 2-D shapes including circles, triangles, squares, rectangles, any quadrilateral, pentagons, and hexagons. They should be able to define and recognize 3-D shapes including rectangular prisms and cubes. We will be learning about line plots (see the math letter that went home today for more information). Additional vocabulary: Estimate (both noun and verb) Length Width Height Centimeter (cm), Decimeter, Meter (m) Inch (in.), Foot (ft.), Yard Angle Face Line plot |