Word Study: Next week's words are grain, railroad, aim, chain, sneak, sailboat, afraid, teacher, reading, faith, laid, eastern. Our patterns are ai, ea, and oa words. Words with oa also have ai and can be sorted into both groups. In these words, two vowels are together. The first vowel sound is heard as a long vowel sound and the second vowel is silent. This builds on long vowel sound words with silent e in that these are all words with two vowels.
Additional words with these patterns for at home spelling activities include: beach, dream, claim, rain, clean, wait, aid, gain, speaker, raisin, creature, snail, paint, bead, cheat, each, available, disease, knead, straight, praise, wait, leash, and plea.
Optional practice pages are below for spelling and letter formation.
Click to enlarge.
We also reviewed common nouns, proper nouns, adjectives, idioms and analogies.
Reading: I am introducing future literature circle jobs with the whole class and modeling them. Our first job was "passage picker." Passage pickers choose a paragraph, passage, or selection and write the reason why they chose it (descriptive, surprising, scary, Ah-hah moment (figured something out), prediction, confusion, connections (text to self, text to text, text to world), etc.) on a Post-It note. I am using our read aloud, Secret of Zoom, to model and am meeting with students to hear their passages and why they chose them. We are also studying context clues to improve our understanding.
Writing: We added conclusions to our writing this week, using one of three strategies:
- Ask a question (not to be overused)
- Learn/Observed
- Feelings or emotions
I conducted a modified Developmental Writing Assessment (DWA) to identify student needs this week. I am looking at convention (indenting, capitals, ending punctuation), topic sentence that introduces the paragraph, sufficient supporting details (who, what, where, when, why), and conclusion. I've asked students to track their topic, supporting details and conclusion at the top of their paper with T, D, and C. We also reviewed the correct orientation of paper when writing. We will write our first pen pal letter next week. I'm very pleased with student progress and invited them to compare today's DWA paragraph with their first "paragraph" from the first day of school. I find this is very inspiring to even the best writers to see how far they have come.
Math: In math we continued our study of partial sums, the traditional algorithms for multi-digit addition and subtraction (without borrowing, borrowing, and borrowing across zeros). We used base ten blocks to model each of these operations and algorithms. We also reviewed time, fact fluency strategies (sums to ten and make ten), how to use an addition/subtraction chart. Some of you had difficulty with STMath (Jiji appeared with a thought bubble, a gray cone and question mark). I think I've fixed that. Please check again from home. Email me if your student can't get into STMath from home and I'll see if I can help.
Science: We continued our Earth Science study this week. We modeled how caves form stalagmites via leaching and evaporation. Crystal gardens will be sent home by the end of the month.
Social Studies: During our daily geography lesson, we were sequencing city, state, country and continent. I discovered that most students do not know their home address and/or phone number. Please review with them.
Important Dates and Reminders
We had our first Ukulele Orchestra practice this week and it was great. Students began strumming and learned their first chord, C. There are many songs they can play in 4/4 time with this one chord: Frere Jacques (Brother John), Twinkle Twinkle, Row Your Boat, Kookaburra. There are also songs you will be familiar with possibly: Bob Dylan's Ballad of Hollis Brown, Eddy Grant's Electric Avenue, Harry Nillson's Coconut and Aretha Franklin's Chain of Fools. We will have Ukulele Orchestra every B and D day from 11:05 until 11:25. Please help your student to remember their ukuleles on these days.
October 20th: School Picture Retakes. I do not have any information on student photos. Please see the envelope that came home regarding retakes or photo packages.
October 24th: No school for students - Teacher in service day.
October 26th: Field Trip to Highbanks Metro Park. Please let me know if you are able to chaperon. See separate post. I have the following chaperons. Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Hargraves, Mr. Westhoven and Mrs. Brown. Please let me know if I have left you off the list. It wasn't intentional:)
October 28th: End of first grading period. I will send reminders of your conference time with your student's progress report.
October 28th: Halloween Party. See separate post.
October 31st: No school - Teacher grading day.
October 31st: Trick or Treat Night in Upper Arlington.
November 4th: Progress reports sent home.
November 7th - 11th: Conferences. I will put your student's date and time on their progress report.
November 8th: Election Day - Early dismissal at 11:05. No lunch on this date.
November 23rd - 25th: No School - Thanksgiving holiday.
