It is getting colder, so please help your child bring everything he/she needs to school to be prepared for the cooler weather, including his/her UST jacket. You may wish to also send gloves, a scarf, and/or a hat.
Water Bottles
This is a friendly reminder to fill your child's water bottle with water before school. Some students have been bringing their water bottles to school empty. Also, a couple times this week, students' water bottles were not locked or the lid was not on tightly when they arrived to our classroom. A few spills happened which made for a busy morning cleaning up and drying school materials, so please help your child check his/her water bottle before leaving for school in the morning. Thank you for your help!
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Morning Meeting is a great time for our class to continue practicing addition, subtraction, and fact families!
Math
Shapes
Our focus this week was 2D shapes. Students practiced cutting out different shapes and folding them to make two new shapes that are alike and two new shapes that are different. After discussing which shapes showed equal and not equal parts, our class was introduced to halves and fourths.
Halves
Students divided circles into halves to make their own half and half pizzas. They also colored different shapes two colors and practiced saying, "One half of the _____ is _____!" (Ex. One half of the triangle is blue!).
Fourths
They completed a similar activity while practicing fourths. They divided shapes into fourths (squares, rectangles, and circles) and chose four different colors. They practiced saying, "One fourth of the _____ is _____!" (Ex. One fourth of the rectangle is pink!).
To end the week students were introduced to these solid shapes: cube, rectangular prism, sphere, cylinder. Next week they will learn about pyramids and cones. We created shape posters for each new shape and talked about faces, edges, and vertices.
Math Vocabulary
Fractions Half Halves Fourths Quarters | Solid shapes 3D shapes Cube Rectangular Prism | Cone Pyramid Sphere Cylinder | Faces Edges Vertex Vertices |
Reading
Readers Meet the Characters in Our Books
Our new Reading unit focuses on story elements and learning more about characters. Our class discussed that like a puzzle, stories have lots of parts/pieces and for it to be complete, we need all of the pieces!
Story Elements
Characters
Setting
Plot (beginning, middle, end)
*Key events
Problem
Solution
We also learned that readers get to know their characters by identifying what the characters do and talking about their actions, likes, and dislikes.
Spelling
Words with k and ck
Writing
Narrative Writing / Creative Writing
This week students published and presented their final personal narratives to the class. This piece of writing was completed independently and shows what each child can do as a writer without extra teacher support.
We also started a new writing unit called Creative Writing. During this writing unit students will follow the writing process to publish made-up stories. We will focus on characters, setting, plot, problem, and solution. Each story will include a main character that faces a problem. The character will try three things to solve the problem until he/she finds a solution.
Grammar Nouns / Articles During Grammar, our class learned that nouns are words that name people, places, and things. The students brainstormed nouns and we created a Noun poster for the classroom. After learning about nouns, the students learned about articles (a, an, the). They worked with a partner to sort words into two groups (a, an). Rules to Follow: a - before a word that begins with a consonant an - before a word that begins with a vowel |
Social Studies
Why do schools have rules?
This week our class talked about why we have rules in our classroom/at school and who makes those rules. We matched rules to the reasons why we have them (Ex. We walk in the halls. ---> Helps us be safe).
We also discussed that there are different ways to make rules and why voting is a fair way to decide which "side" wins. Students learned that in a democracy, there are two ways people vote: sometimes everyone votes, sometimes only the leaders vote. We practiced voting both ways, then learned that countries, cities, and states have rules called laws and laws are made by our leaders voting, so it's important to choose good leaders!
Who works at your school?
On Friday the class asked a new Social Studies question, "Who works at your school?" Students thought about who helps them at school and we created a list of UST names on the board. During the following weeks students will learn more about teachers, principals, secretaries , and custodians.
Have a wonderful weekend!
- Ms. Allison