February

The month of February has come and gone in no time. The students have been very busy and are looking forward to spring.

In social studies we have had a few areas of focus. The students have been following the Olympics and each picked a country to highlight and learn about. Ask your child what their country is. We also spent time with Galleon. The students have reached the New World and are ready to bring the gold back to Spain, except for those pesky English Privateers, they are set on taking the gold from the Spanish Galleon ships. The students are using latitude and longitude to navigate back across the ocean.

In Reading/Language Arts the students continue to build stamina in Read to Self, Read to Someone, Word Work, and Work on Writing. We have also started new strategy groups reading Suspense/Adventure books. Ask your child what their book is about.

In math students have been working on fractions, money, and geometry.

February 1-5

We finally got outside for recess. Last week was tough when we did not get a chance to get some fresh air, but this week was great.

The students have been using social studies time to prepare for student led conferences. For those of you I saw on Thursday night thank you for coming. The kids did a tremendous job!! I am looking forward to seeing the rest of you on Tuesday.

During Writer's Workshop students are working on fictional writing. We talked about how authors take real life events and turn them into stories. We also discussed the different genres of writing.

At Language Arts time the students have been working on our Daily 4. We also have started to add the CAFE, this stands for comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and expand vocabulary. The students have a new strategy for comprehension and accuracy, ask your child about these.

Math continues to focus on fractions, decimals, greatest common factors, and least common multiplies.

Have a great weekend!!!!!

January 19-22

Another busy week, there just doesn't seem to be enough time in a day to get everything done that we need to.

We have switched back to social studies this week. The students will go back to science with Ms. Schmidt at the end of 3rd quarter. We picked up where we left of with our Galleon unit. This unit is our explorers. The students are about halfway across the ocean to the New World. The completed Log Entry 3 this week, ask them to tell you about it.

In Writer's Workshop we have been spending the last few weeks working on conventions. The students had a grammar quiz last week.

In Reading we are continuing to build our stamina in Read to Self. We did not have spelling words this week because of the short week.

Conferences are coming up and these will be student lead. The kids will have a chance to practice the conference a few times with each other before the Main Event!! I look forward to seeing all of you.

Have a great weekend!!!

January 4-8

It was a great week back to school. It took a little time for us to get back into our routines, but once we did it was like we never left.

The students took their NWEA Language Usage test this week. They worked very hard and took their time on the test. Ask your child how they did.

In Writer's Workshop the students worked on conventions. They had five to ten sentences each day that they needed to correct. The focus was on capitalization, punctuation, spelling, and grammar.

During Language Arts the students built stamina in Read to Self, Read to Someone, and Word Work. On Friday we meet with our Kindergarten Buddies. The students also worked with analogies, author's viewpoint, and making inferences this week.

Math the focus continued to be on multiplying and dividing decimals, measurement, and prime factorization.

We also had an all school Pakrat Celebration on Friday afternoon. If your child made the 400 minute club they will bring home a certificate and a SPRITE.

Stay war this weekend!!