Welcome to a new week!

As we get ready to kick off a new week I want to post some reminders for parents and students.

• Remember reading logs and spelling are due back to me each day!
• We have a field trip this week Nov. 20th to Strathmore! Please make sure your permission slips have been turned in!
• The weather has really changed over the last few days. You NEVER know what temperature our room is going to be so please dress in layers.
  
• During outdoor recess PLEASE wear a warm coat!

Now on to our objectives for the week! I am going to break into AM and PM classes because the learning needs are different in each and therefore some of the objectives and lessons will also be different.


AM Class
Reading : During this week we will be responding to reading through writing. We are going to focus on character traits. We learned about character traits in quarter one now we are going to learn how to write our ideas about a character in a story and use information from the book. An author displays character traits in a story by how a character act, what they say, and what others say about them.

Writing: This week we are going to try something new, small groups for writing. I will do a short whole group lesson and then we will break into two small groups. One will work on handwriting skills while I work with a group on interactive or independent writing. We will continue to focus on writing about places we have been to. We are learning how to tell people about a place so they will have information to share.

Spelling: We will continue with long U, same words as last week! Spelling homework will be pasted into journals on Monday! We will learn a new spelling site on the web, and hunt for long U words in magazines. We will finalize our understanding of long U words and take our test on Friday!

Grammar: This week will focus on subject/verb agreement. Students will work with Ms. Samet in the morning on how to identify subjects and verbs in sentences.



PM Class

Reading: Students will listen to a story and write down details about a character as they are listening. We will put our ideas together on a chart and students will decide on a character trait. We will then practice writing our reading responses independently. Students will self-score then we will post some of the responses (no names of course) and their self scores to see if we as a class agree. I want students to know what grade they are going to get when they hand it in. If we practice this enough it should become habit that we answer questions completely. We are also going to work on questioning. Students will ask questions, we will classify questions, and finally determine types of questions through reading informational books. We may not get this all done in one week but I am going to charge as far ahead as possible.

Writing: Students will use a graphic organizer to describe a place they have been. We will work on using stronger vocabulary and descriptive words. After the organizer is complete students will put their ideas into a draft, conduct a peer conference, and finally a teacher conference, before publishing. We will be putting our ideas into a book, creating a table of contents, and illustrations!

Spelling: We will continue with long U as well. We are going to learn how to look words up in the dictionary because students will be using that skill this week for homework. You can also use dictionary.com if you don't have a dictionary on hand, but I would like them to learn how to use the paper version:-)

Grammar: We will learn about subject/verb agreement and identify those parts of a sentence. You may have thought diagramming sentences was gone but it's back!

I look forward to another great week! I miss you guys!
Love,
Mrs. Del Balzo