Short Week!

Well it is a short week between Thanksgiving and PD Day but we are still trucking away to get lots accomplished. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving and doesn't fall asleep too fast after all the turkey. On Tuesday staff is getting together to organize a plan for the school to help students who have challenges with reading. There are many great ideas being tossed around and it will be interesting to see which direction we decide to go.

Forms - There are no forms due at this time. Please make note of the letter that went home last week regarding the new online payment program for school fees, hot lunch, milk, field trips and etc. This should make things a lot more convenient for many.

Math - We have been counting dimes, nickels and pennies (and even a quarter thrown in for an extra challenge). A great activity to do with your child this week would be to spill some of these coins out onto a table and have your child count the total for you. A tip is to start with the dimes and count by tens, then to the nickels counting on by 5's and then the pennies for your final total. Before they count though have them make an estimate as to how much they think there is. 

Language Arts - We have now introduced and are underway with all our Daily 5 activities. We use the Daily 5 model in our classroom 3-4 days a week. In 3, 15-20 minute sessions students decide between word work (variety of center activities to practice word wall words), buddy reading (with a partner), and listening to reading. Each day too students have a writing session and a read to self session. They really enjoy the variety this brings and it gives me an opportunity to work with students individually or in small groups. 

This past week we did some fun Thanksgiving themed writing. The kids read stories about turkey's who disguised themselves as other animals to avoid being eaten. They then completed a writing activity where they pretended to be Tom Turkey who disguised himself as a pigeon and went around convincing people that hot dogs were a better choice over turkey for a Thanksgiving meal. They are all hanging outside our room and are fun to read if you happen to stop by. We also did some writing about all the things we are thankful for. They were pretty sweet and thoughtful.

Science - On Friday, with a very active bunch ready for a long weekend (Thanks Mrs. Ott for the extra help in all the chaos that afternoon.) groups experimented with different insulators to see which work best. On Wednesday we will discuss the results and experiment again with keeping things hot. Please have your child bring in the insulators they have been building at home next week so we can test them out. 

Our current spelling words are listed below. Students will be tested on their words on October 18th. I have listed 6 words below.

list

mitt

have

will

skin

Brayden

Don't forget words can also be practiced through the games and activities on Spelling City (linked below in LA). The words are all loaded in there for you and ready to go, so have some fun with it.