Good Afternoon Families!

It was an absolute pleasure seeing you last night!  I hope you found curriculum night to be informative.  Your involvement and support are greatly appreciated!  If you were unable to attend last night, your student should have brought home an informational packet in his/her take-home folder. 

The link you clicked on is our classroom Blogger page, which will have bi-monthly classroom updates.  Included in the updates will be our current target concepts in all academic areas, classroom events, and important upcoming dates.  An email with a link to our classroom Blogger page will be pushed out every two weeks when our Blogger page is updated.

Here are the targets we are currently  working on--or will begin to work on-- over the next couple of weeks:

Literacy

* Our students are currently working on finding the theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic. We are really enjoying the current novel we are reading, Night of the Spadefoot Toads! I've heard so many positive comments expressed by the kids in terms of how much they are enjoying the book!

Writing

* Our students are off to a great start writing narrative pieces. We are currently working on planning our baseline free-topic narrative piece. This week we brainstormed different challenging situations that a character might face. Students went on to select a topic and have been working on establishing the characters, setting, and problem in their stories!

Math

* Our students are currently recognizing that a digit in one place represents ten times as much as it represents in the place to its right and one-tenth of what it represents in the place to its left using whole numbers and decimals. Next week we finish our learning on this target and begin work on a target that involves the powers of ten and exponents.

Social Studies

* We plan on starting geography in the coming days.  We will start with locating states and countries based on relative location. Current Events start next week! Your student brought home a calendar for the remaining days in August and all of September. Attached to the calendar was a sheet explaining how current events article should be selected and presented. Please help your student be proactive in preparing his/her current event on the assigned date it is due.

Science

* We started instruction of our new science curriculum!  Our current focus is on understanding the makings of various ecosystems around the world. We have enjoyed reading some interesting information on our I-Pads related to our learning. We have also been using our interactive notebook to respond to the reading on our I-Pads as well!

Upcoming Events

** Tuesday, August 30th - Early Release

** Monday September 5th - No School (Labor Day)

Friendly Reminders

** Please remember to send your child with a healthy snack.  Nothing feeds the brain like a healthy snack!  

** Please continue to have your child practice their multiplication facts up to 12. Students who did not score a 45 or higher on our first timed test have been introduced to the X-tra math program that can be done on their I-Pads at home. 

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.  Thank you and have a fantastic weekend!