January 25th - 28th

The students had a great time dressing up for "beach day" on Wednesday.

                                                                  Language Arts

Our writing focus this week was to work on making our writing more interesting by varying our sentence structure.  The students loved writing different sentences starters and couldn't wait to share them with the class.

We also continued to work on our cursive writing.  The students are so proud that they have started handwriting their agenda notes.

During reading workshop we worked on understanding Main Idea and Supporting Details as a reading strategy.  Recognizing the main idea is an important key to good comprehension.  The main idea is a general "umbrella" idea and all the specific supporting information of the passage fits under it.  After reading non-fiction passages, the students were asked to fill out graphic organizers to identify the main idea and supporting details of what they read.

Math

This week we focused on the following curricular outcomes in math:

• Mental Math: Decompose numbers into sums in an organized way and use pairs (making 10) to add single digit numbers.
• Parts and Totals: Use pictures and charts to solve word problems.

Science

Before taking their instruments home, the students formed bands and enjoyed having a little "jam session!"  It was so much fun!

This week we also began our Survivor Building Challenge as part of our "Testing Materials" and "Building with a Variety of Materials" units in science.  On the way to Tunisia our flight had to make an emergency landing on a deserted island.  The students will participate in a variety of building challenges while trying to "survive" on the island.  The students have been placed in tribes and will work together through the various challenges.  

"Black Tigers"

"Red Rangatangs"

"Dragon Warriors"

"Watch Dogs"

Social Studies

This week the students started working on the cover page for their Tunisian lapbook.  Next week we will be learning more about the Tunisian culture.

Art

The students completed their watercolor Winter Birch Trees during art class.  They are up in the hallway just outside our classroom if you'd like to take a look.

One of our friends traded in some of his DOJO points to be able to wear PJ's to school for the day.  He looked so comfy!