Week of October 31-November 4

I hope everyone had a great holiday break!  This week began with a very fun day celebrating Halloween.  Thank you to all of the parent volunteers who helped make it a success.

Other highlights from the week are:

• learning about mysteries
  (students have enjoyed discovering new vocabulary associated with this genre and identifying the story elements of a mystery)
• checking out mystery books from the library to begin an at-home project (due Nov 21st)
  (project guidelines will go home in Friday Folders...I will also add them to the blog)
• exposing the students to a mini-essay through a Brain Pop video
  (students will apply what they have learned about paragraphs to begin a five paragraph essay)
• investigating if seeds can grow with just water and setting up mini-sprouters
• moving on to multiplication and division in math

REMINDER:
Monday is a public holiday so there is no school

Complete the jigsaw puzzle below and then guess the topic of our next reading unit.

Field Trip to the Science Center

Our field trip today was a huge success! Thank you to the parent chaperones who helped out.  The students thoroughly enjoyed every aspect of the center and IMAX theatre.

Week of October 10-14

W.A.L.T.:

• reflect on our work to find supporting evidence/examples of our strengths and areas of growth
• evaluate our own writing using a rubric
• research an important invention in our life and write an expository paragraph about it
• distinguish between long and short vowels
• make long vowels in a variety of ways
• meaure the perimeter of shapes
• measure area

REMINDERS:
Alternative Dress Day is Wednesday
Conferences are Thursday and Friday this week (no regularly schedules classes on those days)

Life Straw - Another Amazing Invention

Brain Pop Jr. - How to Write a Paragraph

Click on the title of this post to go directly to a short video on 'How to Write a Paragraph'.

username: singapor

password: singapor



The main idea of an informational paragraph is the topic, or subject of the piece. The thesis statement, or topic sentence, sets up and states the main idea of the paragraph and tells the reader what to expect from the paragraph. Supporting details back up the main idea. Specific examples help make the main idea clear to the reader. Remind students that they should give at least three supporting detail sentences. Students can come up with supporting details by posing their main idea as a question: “How do you know _______?” The closing sentence is the conclusion, or ending of the paragraph. The closing sentence should tie all the ideas in the paragraph together. Strong closing sentences echo the main idea but also expand the writer’s thesis.

Week of Sept 26-30

W.A.L.T.:

• celebrate the published personal narratives and all of the hard work that went into writing them (check out the post below where the students have recorded themselves reading their stories)
• identify the key characteristics of a paragraph
• discuss books that we read together in small groups during book clubs
• recognize some of the major contributions Leonardo da Vinci has made to the field of technology through a few of his inventions

Wednesday is Alternative Dress Day.

Personal Narratives - Enjoy Listening to Your Child Read their Published Story about Themselves!

Jacob's Personal Narrative


Wyatt's Personal Narrative


Kieran's Personal Narrative


Brandon's Personal Narrative


Cassie's Personal Narrative


Emma's Personal Narrative


Sophie's Personal Narrative


Nuhu's Personal Narrative


Megan's Personal Narrative


Jacquelene's Personal Narrative


Zack's Personal Narrative


Jodi's Personal Narrative


Michelle's Personal Narrative


Caleb's Personal Narrative


Georgia's Personal Narrative


Jon's Personal Narrative


Jaemin's Personal Narrative


Alex's Personal Narrative


Janna's Personal Narrative


Connor's Personal Narrative


Evan's Personal Narrative


Cole's Personal Narrative

The 'Solar Demi'

Inventions Arise out of Needs

Video of Our First Field Trip

Week of Sept 12-16

W.A.L.T.:

• take our seed story drafts and use revision strategies to make them better
  (specifically by using new sentence starter techniques, strong lead, and strong endings)
• make decisions on how technology has affected our lives for both the positive and negative
• monitor and check their understanding of stories while they are reading
• generate fact families and number families
• recognize the inverse relationship between addition and subtraction
• identify ways in which basic addition and subtraction facts are used to solve problems with larger numbers

REMINDER:
Wednesday is free dress.
Technology Diary homework is not due until Thursday.

Week of Sept 5-9

We are learning to: (W.A.L.T.)

• write letters in our Reader's Notebooks to respond to what we have read
• build stories step-by-step instead of summarizing them
• revise leads to our stories to make them more engaging
• solve pattern puzzles
• estimate amounts of money to determine if we have enough to buy certain items
• research inventions within a specific category 

REMINDER:
Field Trip on Friday to the DBS Arts Center to see Just a Dream.  Please send a lunch for your child that day as we will not be eating in the cafeteria.