Weekly Update

Reading Workshop:
Students are really enjoying our informational unit in reading workshop.  At the beginning of this week, students learned strategies for determining the meaning of unfamiliar vocabulary words by using context clues.  They were also introduced to the idea of text structure.  Not all nonfiction texts are organized in the same way.  They read books organized in a descriptive text structure, a sequential text structure, and a comparison text structure.  We are lucky to have a subscription to Scholastic's Storia School Edition where students have access to a variety of awesome texts.  For our lessons, we created book collections for the different text structures.  Students can access Storia at school or at home.

Students read a descriptive text and organized the information that they read using a descriptive web.

Students worked with a a partner to read a book from the "Who Would Win?" series in Storia. After reading the text, they completed a Venn Diagram to compare the two animals.

Writing Workshop:
Students are continuing to plan and now draft their expert reports.  Students had already brainstormed subtopics to support their chosen topic.  This week those subtopics became chapter titles as students began writing a rough draft of their report.  They learned to write an introduction and revisited the concept of a topic sentence.  They are now writing information about each subtopic as a separate chapter.

Math:
Students took the Unit 4 math test in class last week.  It will be coming home this week for you to review.  At the end of the week, we started Unit 5: Writing Equations to Solve Word Problems.  Lessons will focus on solving word problems with unknown addends and unknown factors.

Social Studies:
We have begun our tour of the Midwest Region!  So far, students have visited St. Louis, Missouri, the farm state of Iowa, and Dodge City, Kansas.  In Dodge City, students dressed up like cowboys/girls and learned about cattle drives.

All-Star of the Week:
Ava has been looking so forward to her special week, and it did not disappoint!  The class loved seeing her special medal and trophy that she brought in her sharing sack as well as some awesome photos of her family and herself as a baby.  On Tuesday, she read aloud her favorite book "If you Give a Pig a Pancake."  On Wednesday her parents joined her in the cafeteria and brought her favorite meatball sandwich from Subway!

Mystery Readers
It's been SO fun having Mystery Readers in our classroom!  If you would still like to be a mystery reader during the month of March, just send us an email so that we can let you know what dates and times are still available.

Adam's Mom came dressed as a pirate!

Jaxon's mom read a Fly Guy book.

Megan's grandma read a Tacky the Penguin book.

Elexis's grandma read Dad's Bald Head.

Mahee's Mom visited on Friday.

March is Reading Month:
Our class read so many minutes during the first week of March that we are currently in first place.  If you have been in Celebration Hall lately, you'll see that our balloon is flying the highest!  On Friday, students had the exciting opportunity to read a favorite picture book to our preschool buddies (see photos below).  Don't forget, next Friday, March 20th is Cozy Read-in Day.  Students can wear their P.J.'s to school!