Tuesday, September 25th, 2012

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone had a great, long weekend!

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

*I wanted to make you all aware that ALL students will need a sack lunch TWO times next week. The first is for our fieldwork on Tuesday, October 2nd. The second is on Friday, October 5th for Boot Camp. If you have any questions, please let me know.

Just a reminder, all classes who have 100% of students who have registered for Boot Camp get a $25 gift card. This could be $25 of new books or apps for the iPads. Thanks to everyone who has already registered their children. And, even if you register, your children do not have to collect donations. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Reader's Workshop
This week, we continue to read personal narratives. The focus though, has shifted to listening for the words that create images in our minds. This is helpful so we can include words that paint pictures in our  personal narratives that we write. We'll also focus on reading with fluency, paying very close attention to where authors use punctuation. Again, this will help us put punctuation in our own writing.

Writer's Workshop
Most of us are finished drafting our personal narratives. Over the next couple of weeks, we will revising our pieces, making sure they sound exactly how we want them to. Our next step will be to edit the pieces for punctuation, capitals, and spelling. We hope to have all of our personal narratives published before Fall Break so that we can share them with you. Be watching for an invitation to our classroom for a sharing celebration.

Math
We are currently learning many strategies to become "Fact Power Superheros!" Ask your child what this means to him or her. In class, we practice many ways to solve simple addition and subtraction facts. However, there isn't any time built in for memorization of these facts. I've discussed with students the importance of having these facts memorized, because later this year, we'll be solving more complex addition and subtraction problems. I don't want the lack of knowledge of these simpler facts to get in the way of these tougher problems. Please try to find about five minutes a night to practice addition and subtraction flash cards.

Expedition
Last week, we worked as detectives to put clues together to find out what we will be studying for our first case study of our Social Studies Expedition. Below are pictures of students viewing a mystery piece, which is a photograph of a tumble-down building. The students viewed this photograph and another one. Then, I read them quotes from various newspaper articles. After thinking about these three clues, the students tried to make a reasonable guess as to what our case study is. They discovered, using their background knowledge and the clues, that we will be learning about a ghost town. More specifically, Dearfield, Colorado. We will be going to Dearfield next Tuesday to gather more information about this ghost town. While there, we will have an expert speaker from the University of Northern Colorado.