What's Happening in Room 127? (October)

 October in Review

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

Reading:  We completed our first reading unit, "Building a Reading Life".  In this unit we focused on identifying character traits and supporting it with evidence, making a prediction with support, retelling what you've read, and author's craft (putting yourself in the author's shoes).  We will continue to be working on these skills throughout the year.  Next, we are working on a nonfiction reading unit.

Throughout the first part of the unit we are focusing on reading expository nonfiction texts.  We are learning that when reading we need to be looking out for the main idea and supporting details.  Sometimes there are headings to help us with this, but other times we need to look for "pop-out" sentences.  We are using "boxes and bullets" to help us organize the information that we are learning as we read. 

Writing:  In Writing we finished writing our personal narratives (or "small moments" as we've been calling them).  We spent a lot of time revising our writing.  We worked on developing leads and the closing to the stories.  We also worked on developing the "heart" of the story and telling this part bit by bit.  During our word study we worked on vowel-consonant-silent e, vowel teams, double ending consonants, digraphs, consonants that represent two or more different sounds at the end of words, and ending consonant clusters.

Math:  We completed our multiplication and division unit.  We will be revisiting more multiplication and division skills in future modules.  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.

Social Studies:  We started our first unit on geography.  With this we have been working with different vocabulary such as hemispheres, equator, and continents.  In small groups the students created their own globes and needed to correctly label and place the continents and oceans.  We also have been working on map skills such as using cardinal/intermediate directions to describe the location of different places.

Second Step:  This is what we've been working on in Second Step:

1. We have been continuing to talk about positive and negative self talk.  With this we have been focusing on growth mindset.  
2. We talked about being assertive.
3. Our school theme has been understanding differences.  We have talked about how we all are different in many ways.  We talked about what the word "understanding" means and characteristics of people who are understanding.

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

Reading:  We will continue to work on the nonfiction unit.

Writing:  Information writing will be our focus.

Math:  In future topics within this module we will be exploring a variety of addition and subtraction strategies.

Health:  The next unit is "My Family, Your Family".


Dates to Remember:

Nov. 20-24--No School