What's Happening in Room 127? (October)

 October in Review

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

English/Language Arts (ELA):  This month we completed our ELA unit called "Furs, Fins, and Feathers:  Animal Classification".  During this unit students were reading nonfiction and learning how scientists classify animals.  We learned about characteristics of living things and how scientists classify living things using these characteristics.  We worked to deepen our thinking by asking questions such as "How do you know?" and "Why do you think so?"

We also worked with the prefixes un-, non-, re-, and pre-.  We talked about how adding prefixes changes the meaning of root words.  During spelling we reviewed adding the suffixes -ed, -ing, and -es to the end of words and how sometimes when we add these endings the spelling of the root word changes (double the final consonant, change the y to i, etc).  The class also started working with pronouns and turning simple sentences into compound sentences.

In the writing portion of ELA we focused on informational writing.  We took the elements of effective paragraphs that we learned in the last unit with opinion writing (topic/closing sentences, reasons with supporting evidence, and using transition words) and applied it to information paragraphs.  Students chose an animal/animal group to write about.  We went through the entire writing process with this piece (brainstorming, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing).  The students will be bringing this writing home shortly. Throughout our daily work students were also writing short responses where they were required to use evidence from the text and also completed graphic organizers to show their learning from the reader and read aloud.

Math:  We began our second module which is called "Place Value Concepts Through Metric Measurement".  We have estimated and measured weight and liquid volume by using grams, kilograms, liters, and milliliters.  We also read temperatures on a thermometer, which provided an initial context to rounding to the nearest ten or hundred.  The students used a vertical number line to round numbers and apply their rounding skills to estimate sums and differences.  We are now beginning to work with different strategies to add and subtract larger numbers.  There are different ways you can manipulate numbers to do these operations, along with the standard vertical form.  The idea is that students will be more comfortable in working with numbers and be able to choose a strategy that they feel comfortable with using.

Science:  Our first science unit is called "Environments and Living Things".  During this unit we have been reading and completing investigations to understand why some animals survive better in certain habitats, why some live in groups and others live alone, and why plants and animals change when the environment changes.  We are also learning about fossils and seeing what information the fossil can tell us about the organism from long ago.

Second Step:  We still are talking about growth mindset, but we have also shifted to talking about emotions and what emotions can teach us. 

Health:  In health we focused on two different areas:  resolving conflicts and healthy/unhealthy friendships.  The purpose of these lessons were to:

• to manage and resolve conflicts in a peaceful manner
• to distinguish between health and unhealthy friendships
• explain how strong friendships include being able to express emotions in a healthy way.

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

ELA:  We have just begun a unit on poetry.

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

Dates to Remember:

Nov. 24-28--No School