Go Panthers!

We have had a wonderful week and we can’t wait to watch the Carolina Panthers in Super Bowl 50! Today we showed off our Panther pride with our class cheer (that was completly made up by our students) and our awesome poster!

Reading

This week the students studied fact and opinion by reading about Switzerland and jellyfish (did you know jellyfish don’t have a brain or heart?) We also learned about how to make words into contractions, like don’t and would’ve.  The students have been studying suffixes that when added to the end of root word change the word’s meaning. This week we studied the comparative suffixes “er” and “est”. We learned that “er” means “more” and “est” means “most.” Just like we learned with “ing” and “ed”, when you add suffixes that begin with a vowel you have to drop the “e” at the end of the word. For example, late becomes later and latest. Next week, the students will review the reading and language skills they learned in unit 2 and take the end of unit assessment.

Here are the students comparing words with the suffixes “er” and “est”:

big, bigger, biggest

slow, slower, slowest

sleepy, sleepier, sleepiest

Here are some students hunting for facts about Switzerland!

Spelling

This week the students reviewed when to add “es” to the end of a word to make it plural. We have learned that you add “es” to words ending in “ch”, “sh”, “s”, “x”, and “z.” We will continue to practice this skill next week.

Writing

As we continue to work on writing with voice, the students wrote stories this week that contained strong feeling. Some students wrote about family members they love and others wrote about foods they detest! The students are learning that their word choice plays an important role in whether or not their writing is interesting.

Writers hard at work!

Math 

The students have begun working on multiplication and division! We have learned that multiplying means putting groups together and division means separating a bigger group into smaller groups. The students learned several strategies this week to help them draw pictures of their thinking. They also learned to organize their thinking into arrays, or groups of rows and columns. The students created arrays on their geoboards. Below the students are practicing multiplying and dividing using counters and geoboards.

Have a great weekend! Go Panthers! Keep Pounding!