Upcoming Dates:
Feb. 17 - President's Day - No School
Feb. 22 - Irving Fun Fair!!
Feb. 25 - Opera for the Young - school assembly
Feb. 25 - Field Trip - North Shore Center for the Performing Arts - Golden Dragons Show - more information to come!
*Italics are repeated from last week's blog.
Reading: We will continue our reading unit called: "Bigger Books Mean Amping Up Reading Power". This unit is all about literary language and meeting the challenges of reading longer books. This week the children will learn that readers match their voices to the meaning of the text. We will also work on reading at a pace that is not too fast and not too slow - one that allows them to really understand what they are reading.
Writing: We will continue our writing unit called: "Poetry: Big Thoughts in Small Packages". This is such a fun unit where the kids will get to be creative and express themselves through poetry. This week the kids will learn that poets are always on the lookout for poems, mining their notebooks and their lives for ideas that have strong feelings and concrete details.
Spelling: This year we will be using a program called: "Words Their Way". We will also use another program called: "Phonics Units of Study". We will continue to have individualized word lists. Students will bring their word sorts home on Monday and will be tested on 10 randomly selected words from their sort on Friday. Please spend time working on the spelling PATTERNS from their sorts at home. The goal is not to memorize the words, but to learn the letter patterns.
Math: We continue our module: " Addition and Subtraction to 200". We will learn many new strategies for adding and subtracting larger numbers in this unit! This week we will work on more subtraction. This time we will learn about regrouping ("borrowing") from both the ones and tens places in the same math problem. We will also talk about what to do when there is a zero in the spot where we need to borrow. Finally, we will take an end-of-unit assessment on Friday. This will mark the end of this unit on addition and subtraction; with and without regrouping.