What's Happening in Room 127? (November)

November in Review

Here are some of the things we've been working on this month:

Reading:  We have been continuing to work on reading nonfiction text.  We have transitioned from reading expository nonfiction to reading narrative nonfiction, such as biographies.  We worked on reading this type of nonfiction from two different lenses.  One is reading it as a story--there are characters, a setting, problems, and solutions.  The other lens is reading the story to learn information.  During our word study we worked on different long vowel letter combinations such as long o and long a.  We've also been working with words with the "ew" sound spelled ew and u_e.

Writing:  In writing we have been working on informational writing.  Students are writing books on a topic that they are experts on.  The first part of our unit focused on organizing our books with a table of contents and then organizing each chapter.  The structure that we are using for this organization is called "boxes and bullets".  The "box" is the subtopic that is being written about.  The "bullets" are the supporting details that you are going to be writing about to further develop the subtopic.  Now we are working on drafting our chapters, elaborating on the information, adding text features, and editing.  We hope to finish up our books in the next week or so.  

Science:  We are studying forces and motion.  During this unit so far we have worked on identifying the position and motion of forces, balanced vs. unbalanced forces, we measured patterns of motion to make predictions of future motion, and we learned about bar magnets. The students completed a STEM challenge where given only certain materials (magnet, paperclip tied to a string, masking tape, cups of different sizes, and popsicle sticks) they needed to design and build a structure that would allow a paperclip to float in the air, against the pull of gravity. When we return from break we will be creating electromagnets and studying static electricity.

Math:  In module 3 we are back to focusing on multiplication and division.  We are focusing on the facts for 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 and 1.  With this, we are working a lot on using the distributive property (or breaking apart method as we sometimes call it) to help break a harder multiplication problem into two simpler problems that are easier for us to solve.  This will be helpful for students when they face a problem that they don't know the answer to, instead of drawing arrays and equal groups.

Second Step:  Our Second Step curriculum, along with our school theme, has been focusing on feelings.  We have been working on identifying our own and other's feelings.

Coming Up
Some of the things that we will be working on in December are:

Reading:  Our next unit will be a mystery unit.

Social Studies:  When we finish our science unit we will be doing a history unit in social studies.

Health:  Our next unit is called, "Community Health".

Dates to Remember:
Dec. 9 - MAP testing this week (specific days to come later)

Dec. 19 - Holiday Sing 

Dec. 21-Jan. 5 - Winter Break