Monday, May 13th, 2013

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday! I enjoyed a relaxing day with my family.

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

Reader's Workshop
We are reading fairy tales. As we read, we're discussing the lesson that the fairy tale is teaching. We're also talking about characters and perspective. For example, since we're learning about wolves in expedition, we are examining how wolves are portrayed in fairy tales. This has been a great way in to talk about point of view and perspective.

Also, we are learning some great vocabulary words. Some students are even transferring the new vocabulary to other parts of the day. Last week, one student used the famine (a vocabulary word from reading) to describe what could happen to wolves if we destroy their habitat! I love when kids make those connections! Hopefully you're hearing your child use some of these new words in their conversations with you.

Writer's Workshop
One thing that we're working on in writing is third-person perspective when writing factual descriptions. This has been a challenge because most of us are used to using the words I, me, my, we, our, etc. in our writing. You will have a chance to see our factual descriptions about wolves very soon.

Math
We are almost done with our current unit. Later this week we'll begin the unit where we review addition and subtraction and learn more about multiplication and division. It would be a huge help for students to practice their addition and subtraction facts at home, as there isn't much time in class for this practice. As the concepts in math become more challenging, knowledge of these basic facts is vital.

Expedition
This week we will begin creating our class website about wolves. We will use this website as a way to educate the community about wolves and why we should care if they are endangered. We'll even have a guest speaker teach us about creating a website.