December 8, 2013

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Next week, we will be making gingerbread houses and your child came home with one ingredient to bring in for decorating. The class voted on the types of candy and the supplies will be set up by table groups so your item needs to cover 6 kids, not the whole class. Please have these in to school by next Monday, December 16th. If you cannot get the item listed, please just let me know.

This week...

Reading 
We are continuing to read independently and look at characters. In my guided reading groups, we have been reading non-fiction articles and practicing multiple choice questions. We are also reading winter poems. For read aloud, we are reading holiday books. We read Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, which the class loved and right now we are reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and the class is getting a big kick out of it!

Writing
We finished the personal narrative unit! The students finished their final drafts of the second personal narrative and completed a post assessment. It is amazing to see how much they have grown as writers! We will celebrate the end of the unit by reading each other's work and giving positive feedback. We will start gathering facts for our informational writing on Tuesday.

Math
We will continue learning the multiplication facts. I will send home flash cards for the kids to make as we learn each set. These need to come back to school the next day so we can practice. Then, they will come back home so kids can practice at home each night. The key to getting fluent at these facts is practice, so please have your child practice flash cards each night.

Science/Social Studies
In science, we will finish up the plant unit this week. In social studies, we are working on a unit called Celebrations Around the World. We will learn about holidays celebrated around the world and do a craft to go along with each.

Homework:
Reading-Read 20 minutes each night and record on calendar
Math-Practice multiplication facts each night
Writing-One entry in writer's notebook by Friday
Spelling-Look, Say, Name, Cover, Write Check each night; practice test on Thursday