Upcoming Dates:
April 25-28: In-person Book Fair! 3-6pm Mon/Tues, 3-8pm Wed, and 3-4pm Thurs
May 19: Field Trip to Chicago Children's Theater
May 30: Memorial Day - No School
June 7: Last Day of School
*Italics are repeated from last week's blog.
Writing: We will be continuing our writing unit: "Writing About Reading". This is actually a unit on opinion writing and using evidence to support our opinions. Next week we will learn that writers make comparisons to support their opinions. We will also learn to use mid-sentence punctuation to help highlight ideas for our readers. Finally, we will be working on our introductions and conclusions.
Reading: We will continue with our reading unit: "Series Book Clubs". In this unit, students will work together in small groups to read books in a series. The students will be assigned books at their appropriate reading levels. They will work on comprehension strategies together with their groups. We will learn to preview the first book in a series by paying close attention to the main characters. Then the kids will learn that readers think about how their characters respond to problems. They will also learn to look closely at their characters to determine how they "usually" feel and what they "always" do.
Math: We will continue our work with Module 8: "Time, Shapes, and Fractions". We will build, identify, and analyze two-dimensional shapes with specified attributes. We will be using attributes to draw different polygons including triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons. The kids will learn about all the different quadrilaterals, including: rectangles, rhombuses, parallelograms, and trapezoids. Finally, we will relate the square to a cube and describe a cube based on its attributes.
Social Studies/Science: We will continue our learning about having a growth mindset all year long. We will be continuing our earth science unit: "Pebbles, Sand, and Silt". This week we will be exploring what happens when unwashed sand mixes with water and we will discover that there is a rock-type that is smaller than sand: silt! We have also learned some new states on our maps: North Carolina and South Carolina!