Friday, October 3rd

I can't believe September is over already!  My, how time flies when you are having fun!

During our Daily 5 Literacy blocks, the students now have 3 independent activities to chose from.  The activities include Read to Self, Work on Writing and Word Work.  The students are required to work on all three of these activities each day.  However, they are given choice as to what order they wish to do these activities in.  I am so proud to say that we are up to 15 minutes of reading stamina.  This is so great because it allows me 15 minutes to work one-on-one or in small groups with students!

This week our class completed their second "Words Their Way" spelling sorts/lists.  This individualized spelling program allows for the students to stay challenged and engaged in their word study activities.  On Friday mornings, the students are using Spelling City on the chrome books to write their tests.  This way the students are able to write theirr spelling tests at the same time, although their word sorts are differentiated.

We also just completed our second week of Word Wall Words.  I introduce 5 words per week to the students.  These words are written in the agenda on Monday and are practiced at school during the week.  On Fridays, I include these 5 words in a dictation activity.  The WWW's should be committed to memory and used properly in your child's writing once they have been put up on the Word Wall.

In our writing workshop, we just concluded our "Real Life Heros - Inspired by Terry Fox" writing activities.  We have been really focusing on using proper conventions which includes spelling, punctuation, capitalization, and paragraph structure.  The students are also learning to write topic, supporting and concluding sentences while working on their "All About Me" books.  The students have been given 14 topics to write about themselves.  Each week the students will chose which topic they wish to write about to include in their book.  So far, we have completed 2 out of 14 of the paragraphs.

We are almost finished our "Patterns and Relations" unit in math.  This week's focus was creating, comparing and extending decreasing patterns.  Next week we will wrap up patterning by covering decreasing number patterns followed by a unit review.

This week our Math Fact focus was Partners of Ten.  The students enjoyed practicing their math facts by learning various domino and card games.  Next week we will be working on the Doubles fact strategy.

In science this week the students worked hard to finish up their "Rocks and Minerals" lapbook.  They have really enjoyed putting the information about rocks and minerals together in such a fun way.

The students wrote a mapping quiz on Thursday in social studies.  Everyone did extremely well!  The mapping projects are starting to come in.  I really enjoy reading the student's maps and learning about the different locations that the students would consider their perfect place to live!

Here are a few of 3R's creative maps!

I think that's it for this week's update.  Have a great weekend everyone!