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.

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 couple of weeks.  We also worked on simple and compound sentences.  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.

Social Studies:  We completed our first unit on geography.  During this unit students learned:  the location of the continents and oceans, how to use cardinal/intermediate directions to describe the location of different places, ways people adapt to different environments based on geography and climate, how the Native Americans adapted to the environment long ago.  

Math:  We spent November working with different strategies to add and subtract larger numbers.  We have been working with 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.

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:  We will soon be wrapping up our nonfiction unit and will begin a mystery unit.

Science:  We are moving back into science.  Our science unit is on forces and motion.

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

Dates to Remember:
Dec. 4 - MAP Testing

Dec. 7 - MAP Testing
Dec. 23-Jan. 7 - Winter Break