November already?!

Reading and Vocabulary

The students have studied how to identify the author’s purpose for writing and how to compare and contrast characters in their stories. These strategies help the students pay closer attention to what they are reading. Our next reading strategy asks the students to look for the cause of story events and their effects on the characters.

In vocabulary the students learned about synonyms, words that mean the same, and antonyms, words that mean the opposite. Next week, our vocabulary words are beach, center, finally, idea, ocean, seashell, stack, tiny, wave, and wonder.

Spelling

The students reviewed short a and i sounds this week, in words like include and average. Next week the students will review short e and o sounds, in words like check and frost.

Writing

The students have learned how to write summaries that include a book’s characters, setting, a short description of the plot, the problem, and the solution in the story. They have also learned how to write about their opinions of a book by explaining how they felt about it and then providing evidence for their thinking. For example, if they thought a book was exciting their evidence could be that the characters were always getting in trouble and having to escape.

We have begun the second writing unit in our Write Traits curriculum which focuses on organizing stories so that they have a beginning, middle, and end.

Math

The students have begun their third math unit on place value, money and shopping, time, graphing, and addition. One of the more challenging parts of this unit is shopping and making change. The students will be asked to “spend” money and then determine how much change they should get back. For example, if I have a dollar and buy a pencil for $0.63, how much change should I get? Or if a book costs $2.45 and I pay with $5.00 what is the change?

Project Based Learning: Social Studies

The students have begun working with partners to write and illustrate our class book on goods and services. They brainstormed the chapters needed to make sure their book covers all of the important information and came up with this list: Introduction, good vs. services, manufacturing, steps to make a good, shipping and delivery, supply and demand, and conclusion. Soon, they will work on Google Slides to create a digital copy of the book!