Week 20

We had a blast at Discovery Place this morning seeing Dream Big! We learned about how people use math and science to solve problems like how to make buildings strong for earthquakes and how to build bridges to help villagers get to their local schools. The students were an excellent audience!  

 

Reading

This week I assessed each student’s phonics ability and they have made a ton of growth! During the next few weeks, the students will study the following phonics patterns:

ew and ui, like in the words blew and bruise

oy and oi, like in the words boy and soil

au and aw, like in the words audience and awkward

ou and ow, like in the word ouch and now

Learning these last phonics patterns will help the students fluently read so many more words, which will improve their overall comprehension.

Next week, the students will read a nonfiction piece about jellyfish and study facts vs. opinions. They will also practice reading and writing contractions like won’t, wouldn’t and you’ve.

Writing and Project Based Learning

The students are working on adding voice to their writing. Next week, the students will write nonfiction paragraphs about natural resources (our current P.B.L. unit) and try to spice them up by adding in their voice. The students will split into groups and study water, solar power, wind power, trees and plants, and soil. The students are learning how to take short, concise notes, that are relevant to the topic they are researching.

Spelling

Due to time constraints, we did not get to take our spelling test today and we will take it next Tuesday because I will be out on Monday. Next week, the students will study words containing the vowel pairs ea, ai, and oa and the words will come home on Tuesday. 

Vocabulary

Our next set of vocab words are: Calm, cheer, dawn, entire, fair, field, harm, pain, shiver, and tremble.

Math

The students worked on subtraction with regrouping this week. We began studying multiplication strategies and how to use arrays, or rows and columns of dots, to organize our thinking on multiplication problems. We will continue working on these skills next week and begin learning about division!