October Updates

Upcoming Dates:

• Thursday, October 3rd & Wednesday October 9th - Parent Teacher Conferences
• October 7th or 8th- Vision & Hearing Screening (Please be sure to send glasses if your child wears them)
• October 14-18th- Fall Break
• October 31st- Halloween Parties and Costume Parade

Curriculum Update:

READING:
We wrapped up our first Lucy Calkins Reading Unit, Growth Spurt, last week and are currently doing a small Mini Unit Called: Readers Get to Know the Characters. We are studying characters closely and using what we notice to become the characters through Reader’s Theater! After fall break, we will begin a new unit called Becoming Experts. This unit is devoted to reading Nonfiction. During Reader’s Workshop students will be working on the following:

• We continue to build our stamina to be able to independently read for longer periods of time
• Notice and learn about the difference between fiction and nonfiction
• Notice, learn and question
• Identify “What is this book teaching me?”
• Characteristics of Nonfiction (text features)
• Building knowledge of unknown words
• Strategies for solving unknown words
• Adding info across books
• Retell topics not just books
• Lifting your level of thinking

WRITING:
We will be wrapping up our Opinion Writing Unit this month as well. Students have written several letters stating an opinion with reasons and examples. They have enjoyed choosing their favorite books and characters to write opinion letters to family, friends and classmates. We will conclude the unit by connecting our opinion writing skills with our civics unit by writing about a classmate who we think is our “MVC,” or Most Valuable Citizen. In our opinion writing unit students have focused on:

• Collaborating with a partner to plan writing
• Writing to a specific audience
• Using evidence to support our opinions
• Using precise words to describe a character
• Using transition and linking words to strengthen our writing
• Writing conventions including punctuation, capitalization and spelling
• Editing and revising using a checklist

Our next unit (informational writing) will be connected to our science standards and students will write science lab reports and other procedural texts describing our science experiments on Force and Motion.

MATH:
We will be wrapping up our third Envision topic right before Fall Break. In Topic 3, students are learning various strategies to add within 100.

After Fall Break, we will jump to topic 12, which is a short measurement unit and will align with our work as scientists studying force and motion. Students will explore precise measuring with different standard and nonstandard units including inches, centimeters, yards, and meters. They will estimate, measure precisely, and compare units.

HELPING YOUR CHILD WITH MATH:

• Review the in class worksheets with your student 
• Practice fact fluency using flash cards

SOCIAL STUDIES:
We are completing our unit on Civics this week. Students identified what our Roles, Rights and Responsibilities are in various parts of the school and playground. During our Technology Time with Mrs. Fleet we learned about an App called Adobe Spark. Students then collaborated with a partner to create a video describing one pace in our school. Please look at your child’s Seesaw account for the video.

WORD WORK/SPELLING:
Your child has had several weeks of getting into our routine of Word Work and Spelling. Please continue to practice these words with your child (see yellow word study page in homework folder). The idea is that your child learns to identify the pattern (through sorting) but is also able to accurately spell the words as well. So far, the children are making good progress!