This Week in Room 3....

February 1 - 5
This week in skills block we will be working with the long o sound. Our spelling words will follow the CVCe pattern. They are: go, nose, home, choke, broke, smoke, stone, rose, wrote, and whole. We also will talk about the long u sound. We will continue reviewing contractions and we will also introduce alphabetical order. In Readers' Workshop we will be focusing on story structure. The students need to be able to identify the characters, setting, problem, events and solution in the stories that they read. Our high frequency words for the week are: morning, found, shout, by , out, show, climb, then, that and next. Remember, your child should practice reading their word cards nightly. They should be able to read these quickly and effortlessly.
In Writers' Workshop we will begin report writing. We will begin looking at nonfiction texts and study the features of nonfiction texts such as photographs, table of contents, headings and captions.
In Math we will finish up our Quilt Squares and Block Towns book by creating our "towns". We will use geoblocks to construct buildings for in our town. The students will be working together in small groups in this activity. Following the completion of this book we will administer the county assessment. In math skills block we will solve addition problems that contain 3 addends. We will teach the students to look for doubles ( 4 + 4 ) and doubles plus one ( 4 + 5 ) and combinations of 10 when solving these equations. On Friday we will celebrate the 100th day of school with some special activities.
In science we will continue with erosion and weathering. We will be making observations of the schoolyard before and after it rains along with exploring in the classroom the effects of rainfall on soil. We will also talk about the importance of water and how we need to be safe around water.

Geospy Geography Game

Yesterday in Social Studies we learned about the continents and oceans of our planet. Click here to play a game to see how fast you can identify the seven continents. You can even print out a Geospy agent certificate if you are fast enough!

Scholastic Book Orders

Parents...a letter went home with your child yesterday telling you how to place your Scholastic book order online. Now orders are even easier because you can use your credit card online. Our class still gets credit for your order and we earn free books for the classroom. We still , however, will gladly accept cash and checks for your order and mail it in for you. Please take advantage of the wonderful prices that Scholastic offers and begin building a at home library for your child!

Science Assessment and Exploration

Part of our performance assessment was drawing a picture of how the sun is helpful to us and ways that we can protect ourselves from the sun.

Collecting our soil samples for observation.

Observing rocks and sorting them by characteristics such as color and texture.

This Week in Room 3....

In Readers' Workshop this week we will be focusing on cause and effect. During independent reading time the students will be looking for things that happen in their books and asking themselves "Why did this happen?". We encourage them to mark their page with a sticky note and be prepared to shared during our closing time.
During our mini lessons and guided reading we will also continue to practice retelling our stories. As a grade level, we have noticed that this is an area where many of the students are having trouble. We have many students that are reading accurately and maybe even fluently, however when they close the book they have difficulty retelling the story.
In skills block we are reviewing the long a Cvce pattern and also introducing the long i Cvce pattern.
The spelling words are: prize, smile, shine, write, slide, stripe, kite, ride, time, and mice
Remember, to go to Spelling City for practice on this week's words along with reviewing past word lists.
Our HF words for the week are: fly, give, good, her, little, our, try, was, pretty and around.
We also will be working with contractions this week.
Our skills are practiced daily through fast paced, fun activities that include: poems that contain the phonics skill for the week; chants; word sorts; word wall activities; and games such as Tic Tac Toe and Jeopardy.
Both of us are continuing to assess the students with the DRA reading assessment along with pulling guided reading groups.
Each day the students must read independently as well as complete work in one other center during work time. This week the students will be at guided reading, partner reading, computers using Destination Success, TAG reading, browsing center ( science books about natural resources, rocks and soil) or vocabulary.

In Writers' Workshop we will continue with persuasive writing. In persuasive writing the students are trying to convince their audience to do what they propose or to adopt their point of view on an issue. They must state an opinion on a topic, such as why their parents should get them a pet. Then they must give reasons and be able to support those reasons.

In Math Workshop we are continuing our work composing and decomposing 2D and 3D shapes. The students will be creating "Block Towns". The students will make their own drawings of Geoblock buildings and plan and construct a town made from Geoblocks. They also work with direction and paths as they plan routes through their town. Throughout these activities, students develop vocabulary for naming and describing 2-D and 3-D shapes.

In Science we will continue our study of rocks and soil. We will discuss erosion and safety around water. The students will be completing a performance assessment in their science notebooks.

We apologize for the long post, but feel that it will be more economical for us to stop sending out the paper newsletter and instead utilize our blog for this purpose. We will follow with other posts regarding birthdays , 25 book recognitions and other information that was on our newsletter in the past.