Week 25

This week we returned our focus to spreading kindness and joy. Earlier this year we thought about ways to make our school and community a kinder place and this week we talked about ways to show kindness to our classmates. You can support this work at home by asking your child some ways they tried to spread kindness and joy in the classroom this week!

 

On Tuesday, we saw Jean-Michael Cousteau’s The Secret Ocean on the giant IMAX screen. There was so much information in this movie about protecting wildlife, what happens when you remove a predator or introduce too many predators, and all of the amazing things coral reefs and ocean life are up to at the bottom of the sea! As a class, our favorite part was the octopus, who could camouflage himself by changing colors, patterns, and textures!!

Writing

This week, the students started drafting new stories on topics they picked from their lives. The students worked on writing interesting beginnings, that grabbed their readers’ attention, and making sure their stories contained a beginning, middle, and end. This week we also worked on “showing vs. telling.” The students practiced “showing” their details by vividly describing them, versus just telling the reader their details. For example: Instead of writing, I was so excited! you can write, “Hooray,” I exclaimed. My heart was pounding as I jumped up and down! and your reader can see that you are excited. The students worked with their peers to provide a lot of these interesting moments in their stories. They also did an excellent job sharing their work and accepting feedback.

 

Reading

The students have been studying nonfiction text features, like headings, photographs, captions, charts, and graphs. They have learned that authors include these text features to help explain the text. The students worked with reading partners to read nonfiction texts and determine why the author wrote each piece. We discussed that authors have many different purposes for writing- to entertain, teach, persuade, etc. We will continue learning about the author’s purpose for writing next week. 

   

Spelling

This week we studied the silent letter patterns “kn” and “wr.” Next week we will continue to study silent patterns but these pattern will create long vowel sounds. We will learn about “igh” and “ow” like in the words night and yellow.

Math

As we come towards the end of unit seven, the students are working on writing multiplication stories and practicing their measurement skills. The students are discussing pounds, ounces, inches, and centimeters. Our next math unit will cover fractions!