Monday, November 5, 2012

Good afternoon!

Whew! What a week we had last week. Thank you all so much with your help and support with our Halloween Party and Student Led Conferences. Here are some pictures of our little ghouls from Halloween:

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

Reader's Workshop
We are beginning a new genre study in Writer's Workshop, therefore our focus for Reader's Workshop will also shift. This week and next, we are thinking about questions that we have before, during, and after reading. While your child is reading, discuss the questions he or she has. This will push his or her thinking deeper. We will also be using these questions to infer the author's message while we read. Today, we read the book, Two Bad Ants, by Chris Van Allsberg, to practice this skill. What a great discussion we had!

Writer's Workshop
Today we began our new genre study. We will be learning more about the craft of writing through learning about persuasive letters. I'll update more about this genre, the further we get into it.

Math
A lot of the focus for this week will be around money. One thing we will be learning how to do is count up to make change. Please have your child practice counting combinations of coins and bills at home. This will help with automaticity of coin recognition.

Expedition
We are launching our new case study for our social studies expedition today. Our first case study was Dearfield, a community which did not last. To oppose this, we will be learning all about the community tradition of the Castle Rock Starlighting and what this ceremony has done for the community of Castle Rock. We will be doing a large portion of our fieldwork at the Starlighting ceremony on Saturday, November 17th. Please plan on having your child attend this event. I will send out more information very soon about times. For now, know that I will be asking each child to attend and staff our booth for 30 minutes during a two-hour time period. If you have questions, please let me know. Also, we need binoculars for some fieldwork, this Thursday. If you have a pair our crew can borrow, please let me know. The more sets we have, the more kids get to view our fieldwork. Thanks so much!