Happy Fall Ya'll!
We have been doing so many exciting things in room 5 over the past two months! The students are more comfortable with the new routines and procedures of me being back from maternity leave, so we have been able to do a lot more hands-on learning experiences. In language arts, we have started Unit 3, which is called Changes Over Time. We have discussed concepts such as time and what it is, how plants change as they grow, and what a folktale is. Our vocabulary words were: calendar, immediately, occasion, schedule, weekend, assist, bloom, grasped, spied, sprout, eventually, foolish, hero, tale, and timid. High frequency words addressed were away, now, some, today, why, way, grow, pretty, should, together, water, green, any, from, happy, once, so, and upon. The phonics skills addressed have been long a, long i, and soft c, g, and -dge. The comprehension skills addressed have been character, plot, setting, plot sequence, and plot cause and effect. The comprehension strategy has been making and confirming predictions. We have read stories in many different genres, including fantasy, play, and folktale. The writing trait has been focusing on word choice and our grammar skills have been verbs (present, past, and future tense). In writing, we have been using thinking maps to brainstorm for writing projects and take notes informally. The tree map and flow maps have been focused on the most at this time in the year. We have done writing projects on the things we enjoy about the fall and everything we have learned about pumpkins. Students are required to use their thinking maps to sequence the order of events in the correct order and to make sure they cover the main idea with an opening and a closing. In math, we just finished learning about fractions and are focusing our current number corner on 3D shapes, including sphere, rectangular prism, cube, and cylinder. We have finished studying single-digit sums, combinations with the number rack, tens and teens, and exploring equations. We are starting unit 4 next week, which will focus on investigating adding and subtracting on a number line, jumping by fives and tens, jumping by fives and tens on the open number line, and measuring, comparing, and subtracting with penguins. On our class addition math race, we currently have one student working on her 5s, seven students working on their 3s, eight students working on their 2s, and four students still working to pass their 1s. We are practicing telling time to the hour on both analogue and digital clocks every day and will soon be starting to introduce time to the half hour (the 30s). We have mastered skip counting by 10s, 5s, and 2s and are currently practicing our skip counting by threes. In Science and Social Studies, we started our unit on sound, where we completed a sound walk, discussed the five senses, and will be making our own sound devices next week! We also got to investigate pumpkins, their body parts, and how they grow. We also investigated a desert tortoise with our tortoise trunk from The Living Desert. We will be making predictions on when Mojave Maxine will wake up from brumation and leave her den to determine whether it is an early or late spring. In December, we will be starting our class science project for the TBP Science Fair in January. More details about our project to come. We have studied current holidays and celebrations such as, Dia De Los Muertos, Veteran's Day, the story of the first Thanksgiving, etc. We also spent time focusing on maps. I am amazed at how hard your children work and am excited to see what the future holds for our learning adventures in room 5! Have an amazing and relaxing Thanksgiving break with family and friends! <3 Mrs. Patel
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Happy April! I hope all of our room 5 families had a relaxing and enjoyable Spring Break. It is important that we we work together the last couple months of school in order to combat "Spring Fever" both academically and behaviorally.
In math, we have been focusing on being able to apply our knowledge of addition into word problems. We have been practicing to solve these problems using groups of tens and ones, in order to practice place value. The three strategies we use most often to solve these word problems are 1) drawing pictures, 2) identifying our groups of tens, and 3) using words to explain. Before spring break, we also began incorporating subtraction concepts into our word problems and strategies. In language arts, our unit was called Figure It Out, which means making sense of the world around us. Topics that we investigated include See It, sort It; Up In The Sky; Great Inventions; Sounds All Around; and Build It! This unit has made it very easy to take part in and connect with memorable Science and Social Studies activities. Sounds of the week included: words with /ar/, words with ir, ur, er, or /ur/, words with ore, or, and oar /or/, words with ou and ow /ow/, and words with oi and oy /oi/. Grammar concepts included: irregular plurals, inflectional endings with -er, abbreviations, inflectional endings with -est, and diphthongs. We also had so much fun celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday with Dr. Seuss Week! Congratulations to all of our March award and reading challenge winners! P.S. This is a reminder that in order to win the reading challenges each month, your child must complete all of the reading logs in their homework for the month. March was the last opportunity to win a reading challenge. Students who have completed all reading challenges from October until March will receive a special lunch party on May 4th! :) Happy February!
We kicked off this month with Kindness Week, which was a huge success! Students participated in school spirit and classroom activities each day and learned how to treat others well and be a good friend. You can help at home by continuing to have these conversations about kindness with your child throughout the rest of the year as we continue to support this behavior in the classroom. As you may already know, our class began a Science Experiment in December and finished last month. We competed in our school's Science Fair showing our project on how candy canes dissolve in the following liquids: hot water, cold water, salt water, oil, and vinegar. We received a second place ribbon and I am proud of the hard work our students did on this big project! In math, we have been working on adding unknown numbers by making groups of ten in order to solve them. We have applied this skill to word problems and basic addition facts, At this point in the year, students should be working on, at least, their 5's in our weekly math race. We have learned to solve problems by breaking numbers down into parts, drawing pictures and diagrams, and circling clue words. Students should be practicing their math race addition facts each night, as well as their weekly spelling words, and completing their reading log. In Language Arts, our current unit is called Animals Everywhere. We have discussed animal features, animals together, in the wild, insects, and working with animals within our daily Language Arts routines: spelling/vocabulary, blending/phonemic awareness, reading/fluency, comprehension, grammar, and writing. Report cards are being sent home during conference week, so students have two weeks until final grades. It is very important that they are doing their required practice at home, working hard in the classroom, and having good attendance/being on time for school every day! If not, these things may reflect in their grades. Take a deep breath, relax, and enjoy the upcoming four day weekend! We are only 3 days away from winter break and all the students have been working hard the past 2 months!
In Language Arts, we have been covering units that study Our Community and, most recently, Change Over Time. It has been fun to see them apply what they have learned across all ELA skills such as writing, reading, vocabulary, grammar, and comprehension. We have been able to apply social studies within these units looking community jobs and the past, present, and future. For example, comparing and contrasting schools then and schools now. In math, we have been working on seeing the relationship between addition and subtraction problems in fact families, word problems, number bonds, words, and pictures. We use a variety of visual representations. We have just finished out module assessment on module one and have begun to move on to module two, which covers the introduction of place value through addition and subtraction within 20. We have been deep into the study and experimentation of our candy cane Science project. We are looking at the rate at which candy canes dissolve in warm water, cold water, salt water, oil, and vinegar. Students had to make predictions, a hypothesis, and a question before we began the experiment. When we get back from winter break, we will analyze the data we have collected in order to draw and make conclusions about which liquid dissolves the candy cane the fastest. We took our first field trip to the KESQ News Station and learned so much! See our Class Dojo story page for pictures. We have also been studying, encouraging, and doing acts of kindness within our classroom. For example, giving a compliment to your friends, writing a thank you note to someone special, or holding the door open for someone. We can all be kind in some way! This has been a fun first part of the year and I can't wait to see what the second half of the school year has in store for us! <3 Mrs. Patel Welcome to October! I can't believe how quickly this year is going by!
Here is a short summary of what we have been working on over the past month: In Math, we have been working on addition concepts, including the commutative property and understanding the equal sign. We have also been practicing how to apply those concepts to simple work problems. In our math race, three students have already made it to addition with their 4s! Let's keep up the good work and keep practicing our addition facts! We are finishing up our mid-module assessment this week and will be moving on to more concepts involving subtraction and how to relate addition to subtraction. In Language Arts, we have finished our unit on 'Getting to Know Ourselves" and have been focusing on the new topic of Our Community. We have discussed and studied our own community, as well as other communities, and the jobs, business, and buildings necessary to create a community. Our writing has been on informative, explanatory texts, where they need to provide a topic, details to support the topic, and some sense of closure. In grammar, we have learned about nouns (possessive, plural, and singular), as well as contractions. We just got our iPads as well and the students were so excited to start practicing how to use them appropriately! I am excited to see how the children will continue to progress and I cannot wait to share with you what they have been and will be working on. See you back here next month! The first 3 weeks of school have gone by so quickly and we have already done so much!
In Language Arts, the essential question of our unit is "What do you do at your school?". With that question, students have been able to focus on making connections to realistic fiction and nonfiction texts read aloud about this topic by comparing key details from those stories to their own lives at school and in the classroom. We have been learning how to visualize what is happening in a story as we are hearing it and create pictures in our minds. We have been able to do this by not only making connections to our own lives, but comparing two texts that are about the same topic. The sound we have been focusing on is the short /a/ sound and words that have that phoneme in the beginning, middle, and end of the word. We also focused on the inflectional ending -s (i.e. I nap = he naps, I pat = he pats, etc.). Our high frequency words this week are does, not, school, and what. In writing, we have been using thinking maps and our close reading companion to write about and brainstorm key details and ideas from texts we have read. We also have been working on opinion writing every morning. We continuously work on text structure, punctuation, and grammar. In math, we have been working with addition through number bonds and math stories. Number bonds help us to see a simple math equation and break up the total into parts using a visual. We have been working up to totals of 9 but have introduced higher numbers as well. Sometimes we work with problems with a mystery number, where one of the addend values is unknown, and sometimes we just solve to find the total. Our PBIS (Postive Behavior Intervention Strategies) focus for the past 3 weeks have been routines and procedures and how to deal with frustration. This week was our first week of homework. Every Friday, we will have a spelling test on the words given in the homework packet, an addition quiz for our math race, and a weekly unit test for language arts. We have been focusing on the book Pete The Cat Rocking in My School Shoes and he has been getting us excited for school! For more Pete The Cat fun at home, visit the website at http://www.petethecatbooks.com/. Thank you for all of the parent support in room 5 and supply donations! I could not do it without you! Mrs. Patel Week of January 9th.
We had an eventful week during our first week back to school after break. We had a PBIS assembly on Monday to review school rules and how students are expected to act in the classroom, hallways, bathroom, cafeteria, etc. In Language Arts, we studied and compared two folktales: The Monkey and The Hats and Drake's Tail. We had to ask and answer questions about the text and took an Accelerated Reader test on Drake's Tail in the library today. In math, we compared two digit numbers and practiced the concept of greater than and less than. We will finish our unit 8 summative assessment on Tuesday. Two Bunch Palms has a science fair next week, so room 5 has been busy working on our class science project. We have conducted our experiment of seeing how candy canes dissolve in cold water, warm water, salt water, oil, and vinegar (see picture above). Next week, we will finish our project and investigate the results. In enrichment, we learned about the plant cycle, Andy Warhol and pop art, and investigated all about Martin Luther King Jr. and why we have no school on Monday. See you all Tuesday! We made snow today and it was so much fun! If parents want to make this at home, all you need to do is mix together conditioner and baking soda (we added some glitter). Shaving cream and baking soda also works. It feels cold like real snow and smells fresh.
Thank you to all the families who came to watch room 5 in the winter program! The students were so excited to see you all there. I hope these cute little elves have a fun and exciting winter break! See you in 3 weeks! P.S. No homework over break but students should be reading every day and practicing on Lexia and Dreambox when possible. Week of November 28th:
In Language Arts, we worked on the long /a/ sound, using the silent "e" to identify that sound. For example, gate, late, came, etc. We began unit 3 on Literature and started by investigating the story Town Mouse, Country Mouse. We need to ask and answer questions about key details in a text, identify words or phrases in the story that suggest feelings or appeal to the senses, and compare and contrast the adventures and experiences of the characters in the story. In writing, we are continuing to work on investgating informational text and citing our evidence in the text. We have the district writing task coming up and will be practicing more next week while investigating in an informational story about reindeer. In math, we took our unit 5 assessment on telling and writing time to the hour. We also began unit 6 on developing addition and subtraction strategies. The focus will be on solving problems with unknown addends using properties of operations. Students will learn that addition and subtraction are inverse operations, and develop strategies for both. Specifically this week, we focused on understanding the commutative property of addition using the following key vocabulary: addends, addition, commutative property of addition, equal, equation, sum, and total. The holiday season is upon us and we have been sent a kindness elf, whom the students named Ruby. She watches over the students to see if they are completing acts of kindess and rewards them if so. This week, Cassandra, Josue, Miguel, and Chelsea were visted by Ruby. She helped the students practice sharing books, making someone feel else feel special, cleaning at home, and cleaning at school. Also, our PBIS social skill of the week was correcting others appropriately. 2 more weeks until winter break! Week of November 7th:
I am excited to meet with all of room 5's wonderful parents next week! Please confirm with me your child's conference time if you have not yet. In order to prepare for conferences, students reflected on their school year so far and completed a student report card where they indicated what they feel they are really good at, what they feel they need more help in, and what their most and least favorite subjects are. Parents will be able to take these home next week. We finished unit 2 on informational text in ELA this week. Our final story study was Busy as a Beaver. We picked unknown and/orinteresting vocabulary words, created a brace map to identify the main idea, completed a detail/question chart, and began a double bubble map to compare beaver homes to people homes. When we compare, we are learning to use terms such as "also, similarly, in the same way, likewise, and just as." In grammar, we practiced with pronouns, which is a word that takes the place of a noun. We brainstormed together and created our own pronouns in a circle map. We also practiced using them insentences. In writing, we began investigating an article about the Red Pandas. We will continue our writing next week. During enrichment this week, we learned about the water cycle in science, perfected our penmanship in handwriting, and learned about Veteran's Day in reader's theater. In math, we continued to work on unit 4, investigating quantities to 99. We reviewed counting on by tens and by ones and applying patterns and relationships in the counting sequence. Next week, we will take our unit 4 assessment and begin looking at telling time in more detail. Our PBIS Social Skill of the week was asking for help, where we look at the person we want help from, ask the person if they have time to help, clearly explain the kind of help that you need, and thank the person for helping. It was a great week! learningwithmissjoiner.weebly.com |
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