March 25, 2021

Reading

Over the past few weeks, the students have worked on several important reading skills: comparing and contrasting story details, predicting what will happen next, and using context clues. The students have begun working on inferential reading strategies that require them to think past what is directly stated in the text. They have done an excellent job practicing these skills by using the text and their own knowledge to understand the deeper meaning of what they read.

After Spring Break, the students will continue to practice using context clues and they will begin to study how to draw conclusions.

Science

Ms. Jaydn has begun a new science unit on rocks and minerals. This is another hands-on unit and the students have been examining the colors, textures, shapes, and hardness of various rocks. The unit covers the three types of rocks: Igneous (rocks formed by the cooling of lava or magma), sedimentary (rocks formed from particles of sand, shells, pebbles, etc.), and metamorphic (rocks formed by heat and pressure beneath the earth.) The students will also learn how weathering and erosion shape the world around them.

Writing

The students have done a fabulous job choosing strong verbs and adjectives for their writing! They understand that stronger words make a clearer picture in the mind of their reader. Our next writing unit will cover sentence fluency. The students will learn how to make sure they are writing in complete sentences, begin sentences in a variety of ways, and practice “testing” sentences by reading them out loud. The students will also learn how to construct longer, more interesting sentences by adding shorter sentences together and connecting them with a conjunction (and, but, so, or, yet, etc.)

Spelling

This week the students practiced words that contain nasal sounds (or sounds that require air to go through your nose!) After the break, the students will study words that contain multiple syllables and short and long vowel sounds. These are words like attach, rabbit, and toenail.

Math

This week the students wrapped up their unit on fractions and we will do a quick review when we come back. This unit covered identifying fractional parts of pictures, finding fractions in collections of things, identifying equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, and fraction number stories. One challenge in this unit was a problem that asked the students to find a fraction of a collection of things. For example, there are fifteen fish in a tank and 1/3 of the fish are guppies. How many of the fish are guppies? In order to solve this problem, the students split 15 fish into 3 equal groups, then they saw that each group contained 5 fish, so the answer is 1/3 of 15 is 5.

Our next math unit covers measurement. The students will learn about linear measurement (inches, feet, yards, meters, etc.), fractional lengths of units (like how to find half an inch on a ruler), area and perimeter, capacity (cups, pints, quarts, etc.), and weight.