October PTCs are scheduled for Friday, October 20th. Thank you for using the Google Sheets form to sign up for a time that works well with your schedule. Your child will need to attend the conference with you. The beginning of the conference will be an opportunity for your child to share his/her goals and thoughts about school.
A form was sent home this week to help you prepare for our PTC. Please take time to complete this form, including information about your child's strengths and goals. This form is due Monday, October 16th.
This week our class started Rocket Math! Rocket Math is a weekly 3 minute timed addition facts test. Below is an example of the recording sheet to keep track of progress. Your child will need to earn 40/40 on a test to "shoot up" to the next level (Level A, Level B, Level C...). When a student has mastered a level, he/she will color the level on the rocket.
Rocket Math flashcards (numbers 1-10) were sent home this week. This is a resource for you to use at home to help your child practice his/her addition facts. Flashcards do not need to be returned to school.
On Thursday we visited a local fire station. The students had a lot of fun learning about a firefighter’s job and all the equipment they use to keep people in the community safe. When we returned to school, students wrote about the field trip in their writing journals.
Show and Tell started this week. Students are excited to have Show and Tell as part of our weekly schedule.
Topic: something your child enjoys playing with/doing at home
Each student should present for 3-5 minutes.
In order for Show and Tell to be a successful and valuable part of our schedule, students should prepare at home. Please take time at home to help your child practice presenting his/her Show and Tell item to an audience and answering "Why?" questions.
In addition to being prepared, students need to be ready to listen to their peers. We have been working on being good listeners in class. Throughout the school day, I often ask the students, "Are you being a respectful listener? Are you listening to learn?" Children will use the following checklist to ask themselves how well they are listening.
LISTENING CHECKLIST
- Sit quietly and respectfully.
- Look at the person who is talking.
- Listen for important words.
- Ask questions after the person has finished talking.
I will give students feedback by marking a simple rubric and writing a short comment. Please go over this rubric with your child so they understand what is expected of them. You can find your child's completed rubric in the back of his/her Spelling Notebook.
Rubric:
Our class has been focusing on empathy and the importance of thinking about how our actions and the things we say impact others. Students are practicing how to "put yourself in someone else's shoes" to help them understand how others feel. During morning meetings, students have been sharing examples of kindness and are encouraged to give each other a "shout out" for being kind. Our class will continue to take time throughout the week to share and celebrate the positive choices students are making.
On Friday, October 13th our school had its first monthly assembly. These assemblies give UST students an opportunity to come together and learn about all the things that are happening in our school. During this assembly, G3 - G6 students sang a song they have been practicing in Music, three G3 students presented to tell the school about their field trip, and student council members were introduced.
This week we practiced short u. Our spelling words included words from the word families -ut (but) and -un (fun, run, sun). Students noticed that we could also use our weekly works to create -us (us, bus).
Each week we have a new poem. This week our poem was titled Short U. If the letter u made the short u sound in a word, students took turns highlighting it in the poem.
During Reading, we learned that readers set goals by keeping track of how many books they read, then trying to read more. After students picked a reading goal (ex. I want to read 3 books today) they chose their books and went to their smart spot to begin reading. Each student had a pencil and a post-it note to write the titles of the books they read. While reading, students practiced following our class’ Read to Self chart (eyes on my own book, read the whole time, stay in one smart spot, and read quietly to myself) to “count” the book and add it to their list.
This activity prepared them for the following day, when students made a new goal and read with a partner. Our class practiced reading with a partner to learn more from the books. We reviewed how to read with a partner using our EEKK chant.
EEKK - Reading with a Partner
Elbow to Elbow
Knee to Knee
I read to you,
You read to me.
Elbow to Elbow
Knee to Knee
Book in the middle
So we both can see!
Students learned that when we’re reading with a partner, it’s important to take turns. After practicing, students set a goal (ex. I want to read 4 books with my partner) and worked with their partner to reach their goal.
This week our class was introduced to identifying strengths and setting goals. To prepare for our October PTCs, students took time to think about how they feel about school and the things they do during the school day. We also focused on academic, behavior, and social areas to pick strengths and areas to improve (goals). Students followed the writing process to pre-write, write a draft, revise, edit, and publish. These writing pieces will be presented to parents at the PTC meeting.
During Social Studies we learned about facts and opinions. Students participated in a fact vs. opinion sorting activity.
Our class used this information to help sort the cards:
- Some sentences share facts. Facts are true.
- Some sentences share opinions. Opinions are how someone feels about something.
Here are the countries represented in our class:
Japan
America
New Zealand
Great Britain
Mongolia
China
We played a game to practice matching symbols to the countries we are from. I showed the students a group of symbols and they had to guess the country. Each student had an opportunity to tell our class why the symbols make us think of their country. It was a great activity to learn more about each other and celebrate the diversity in our classroom!
This week our class was introduced to a new unit in Science. Our new unit is titled Technology All Around Us.
Big Idea: Engineers use a process to design and build something new. They use many different kinds of materials.
Essential Questions:
How Do Engineers Work?
How Can We Solve a Problem?
What Materials Make Up Objects?
How Can Materials Be Sorted?
Science Vocabulary
engineer
design process
Students completed a learning log entry in their writing notebooks. They wrote about what they learned in our first Science unit and what they think they're going to learn in our new unit.
Learning Logs: A learning log is a special kind of journal. You write about facts that you are learning. You ask questions and underline new words.
Write - Write the date and the subject
Tell - Tell a new fact you learn or what happens in class.
Share - Share your thoughts about it.
Ask - Ask questions you have.
Underline - Underline new words.
We started a new chapter in Math this week. It focuses on subtraction.
Big Idea: Subtraction can be used to find how many are left.
During this chapter, students will practice these skills:
- Take away to subtract
- Count on to subtract
- Count back to subtract
- Use number bonds to subtract
- Write and solve subtraction sentences
- Tell subtraction stories about pictures
- Solve real-world word problems
- Recognize related addition and subtraction sentences
- Write fact families
- Use fact families to solve real-world problems
- Determine if number sentences involving addition and subtraction are true or false
Math Vocabulary
take away
subtract
minus
subtraction sentence
less than
subtraction story
fact family
This week our class played a game called What's Hidden? Students worked with a Math partner to practice new ways to subtract: take away, count on.
How to Play What's Hidden
- Player 1 chooses a certain number of connecting cubes and shows them to the other player (1 to 10 connecting cubes)
- Player 2 records on his/her paper, "We started with ___ cubes." (write the number, draw the cubes, circle the number on the number line)
- Player 1 hides some of the connecting cubes
- Player 2 records on his/her paper, "I see ___ cubes." (write the number, draw the cubes, circle the number on the number line)
- Player 2 uses a subtraction strategy to find out how many cubes his/her partner has hidden
- Count on example: " There were 8. Now there are 5. 5...6, 7, 8. You hid 3!"
- Player 2 records the answer and circles if they were correct (Yes / No).
- Ms. Allison