Video of the Week

Water Cycle Song

Weekly News March 7-11, 2016

Homework: There is a  new writing homework assignment in your folder. This assignment is due Friday, April 1st. The reading log and math packet are due on Friday. Please return them in the yellow folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log..

Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: There is still time to help our class build a wonderful arts & craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket. Thanks to those who have already contributed to our basket.

Language Arts and Science: Students are working on writing an informative piece on the storm they researched. We are going to record our weather observations this week. We will study the long o vowel patterns. We will review the CVCe pattern and learn that oa can also make the long o sound.

Mathematics: Please sign and return the Chapter 10 Math test. Let me know if you have any questions about your child’s progress. We are working on writing money amounts in both cents and dollar and cent notation. We are learning how to compare money amounts using the <,> and = symbols. Student will be working on solving real world word problems involving money. We will focus on the problem solving steps of Understand, Represent, Solve, Answer and look back.

Ways you can help at home: Help your child as he/she explores a new topic of interest to read and writing about for the writing assignment. Continue to watch the weather together. Describe your observations. Watch a meteorologist on tv together. Talk about the key words he or she used to tell about the weather. Read books and poems about the weather or seasons. Practice counting coins and bills. Talk about how to write it in dollar and cent notation. Show different ways to make the same value. Look for long o words in your reading. Continue to read aloud to your child and have conversations about what you read.

Video of the Week

Our Seasons in Two Minutes

Weekly News February 29 - March 4, 2016

Coins: In math we will begin a chapter on money. Using real coins benefits our learning. To help students practice counting coins please send in the following coins:

15 pennies

20 nickels

15 dimes

5 quarters

Please send the coins in a baggie labeled with your child’s name by Wednesday, March 2nd. The coins will be returned at the end of this chapter.  Thank you in advance for your help with this.

Homework: Our writing assignment is due Friday along with the math packet and reading log.. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.

Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: There is still time to help our class build a wonderful arts & craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket. Thanks to those who have already contributed to our basket.

Language Arts and Science: We will continue to be learning about weather through our reading and writing activities. Our long a word sort work will continue this week. The students are doing a great job writing about their favorite sport or hobby for our informational writing. We will begin to research storms. Then students will write an informational piece on the storm they studied.

Mathematics: We will be reviewing our mental math, rounding and estimation skills. We will begin chapter 11 on Money. Please see the Family Letter about this chapter and ways you can help at home.

Ways you can help at home: Continue to watch the weather together. Describe your observations. Watch a meteorologist on tv together. Talk about the key words he or she used to tell about the weather. Read books and poems about the weather or seasons. Practice counting coins and bills. Talk about how to write it in dollar and cent notation. Show different ways to make the same value. Look for long a words in your reading. Continue to read aloud to your child and have conversations about what you read.

Video of the Week

Our World:What is Weather- See the video link list on the right.

Weekly News February 22-26, 2016

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Continue to work on the writing homework. Remember it is due March 4th. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.

Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: Help our class build a wonderful arts & craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket. Thanks to those who have already contributed to our basket.

Thanks for all the help for our holiday parties this year. A special thank you to Rebecca Edwards for organizing the parties. The children had a lot of fun celebrating together.

Language Arts and Science: We will become weather watchers and researchers for the next several weeks. We will begin by observing clouds. The students will learn the three basic clouds: cirrus, stratus, and cumulus by reading the book Clouds by Tomie dePaola. We will discuss how these types make other types of clouds. In our reading groups we will each be reading about the water cycle. As a read aloud we will be reading Snowflake Bentley.  Students will be working with the long vowel a. We will learn that it can be spelled ai or ay as well as the CVCe that we already learned earlier this year. In writing our focus will shift to informative writing. We will begin by selecting a sport or hobby that we know well. We will divide our topic into three headers or driving questions. We will learn to use key words to take notes. Then take the notes and turn it into an informative paragraph. We will read Stand Tall Molly Lou Melon. This is the book of the month that will be discussed at our All School Meeting on Friday.

Mathematics: We are continuing our work on mental math. We will review addition strategies and then focus on the subtraction strategies. On the back of our newsletter is a helper chart of our subtraction strategies. We will learn how to round two and three digit numbers to the nearest 10. We will practice using rounding to estimate sums and differences. Using estimation students will learn the steps to see if their answers are reasonable. We will work on explaining our answers in writing.

Cursive: We slowly started learning about our first group of cursive letters. So far we have learned the letter a. It is in a group we call the “Clock Climbers.” All the letters in this group begin the exact same way.

Ways you can help at home: Watch the weather together. Describe your observations. Watch a meteorologist on tv together. Talk about the key words he or she used to tell about the weather. Read books and poems about the weather or seasons. Review numbers that make 10. Review the numbers that make a hundred. Practice solving equations that involve a missing number with your child. Go over any problems that your child may have missed on class work or homework. Talk about whether it was a careless mistake or whether they were confused.

Video of the Week

Water Cycle Rap

Weekly New February 9-12, 2016

Homework: The math packet and reading log are due on this Friday. Due to the snow day Monday night’s homework is optional. Please return it in your Yellow Reading Log/Math Homework Folder. Continue to work on the writing homework. Remember it is due March 4th. Please make sure you sign your child’s reading log.

Reminders:

We will celebrate Valentine’s Day on Friday, February 12th. Please have a candy free Valentine card for each classmate. You may also send a snack for your child to enjoy at our celebration. The students in our class include: Yakub, Hannah, Max, Stella, Chris, Declan, Ryan E., Ryan F., Aidan, Michelle, Owen, Natalie, Ellie H., Samantha, Colin, Kelly, Kaitlyn, Victoria, Zak, Shruti, Jack and Ellie S.

Basket Raffle for the Fun Fair: Help our class build a wonderful arts&craft basket to raffle. Please bring send in any supplies for our basket.

Supplies:  Our classroom community is in need of  tissues, erasers (block kind), glue sticks and dry erase markers. Thanks!

Language Arts and Social Studies:  We will continue to read about leaders and talk about what makes a good citizen. Students will be working with the long vowel e spelled ea.  We will be editing our opinion pieces.

Mathematics: This week we will be focusing on mental addition strategies. Then we will review what a difference is and begin to some mental subtraction strategies.

KidBlog: To get on your child’s kidblog go to the website at https://kidblog.org/class/mrs-porters-class8/posts 

Scroll to your child’s name and click it. Then enter the password. This is your child’s first and last initials lowercase followed by your child’s student number (your child knows his/her number) and sss If your child has a single digit student number put a zero in front of the number. For example, if Jane Doe was number 5 it would look like this jd05sss  Let me know if you need any support getting on it. The students who have gone on are enjoying posting and  commenting on their peers’ blogs. Your child might like reading and writing on their blog over the break. I have to approve the posts and will check at least once a week or more to approve posts and comments. Encourage your child to use capitals and end punctuation in their work.

Ways you can help at home: Help make sure your child is getting started with their writing homework. Model adding numbers in your head and talk about what you did. Then have your child try it.  Get your child to talk about his or her day. Here is a website that might be able to help if your child doesn’t want to say much. Check it out for ideas. http://www.simplesimonandco.com/2014/08/25-ways-ask-kids-school-today-without-asking-school-today.html/

Play games with your child over the break, read books together,  Have a safe, relaxing week!