December Update

I hope you all are enjoying the winter weather!  It sounded like the kids had a lot of fun on their first snow day.  Just a couple of reminders about upcoming events.  We will be having an early release this Wednesday, so please make sure your child knows his or her going home plans.  Also, later this week students will receive a copy of the spelling bee newspaper.  It has a variety of spelling activities as well as a list of words that can be used to practice for the spelling bee.  We will have our class spelling bee next week to determine who our classroom winners will be.  These class winners will participate in Long's spelling bee on Friday, January 17th.

 Most of the students did well with multiplication, but a few students really need to practice their facts.  Please work with your child at home to make sure they know their facts.  As a fun culmination of the unit on multiplication, students worked in groups to create a multiplication board game.  There were many creative ideas, and the games turned out great.  They enjoyed getting to play games created by their classmates!

Currently we are studying division, and we will have a test over this skill before Christmas break. Look for a study guide to come home later this week or early next week.

In reading, we are using context clues to figure out the meaning of unknown words when we read. Also, we started new reading groups last week so your child has a new reading group book.  Reading groups are a great way for the students to apply the strategies and skills we are learning in reading.

The students are doing a great job in writing!  We had our celebration early in November when we read aloud our personal narratives.

Now we are using what we have learned about informational writing and applying it to Native Americans, a topic we have learned about in social studies.  The students are discovering many interesting things about Native Americans and how they lived.  Later this week they will take what they have learned when researching Native Americans and write a rough draft of their information.

Too bad we just finished learning about weather before the big snow storm hit!  Hopefully the students had a better understanding of what caused it, though.  Before Christmas break, we will be learning about matter and light in science.  Currently, we are studying the states of matter and conservation of matter.