Unit 5 Week 2 Preview

This week we will be focusing on many different scientists how they develop questions to discover new things about the world around us. We will read about the many contributions of Benjamin Franklin and read again about Alexander Graham Bell. We will also read about the important contributions of George Washington Carver to the field of botany. We will again use the strategy of summary to develop our skill of making inferences, which is probably one of the more difficult comprehension skills to master. When making an inference about material we've read, we connect what we've read to what we already know to draw a conclusion which has not been explicitly stated by the author. Our oral vocabulary words will be: career, curious, fascinating, improve, and investigate. Our site words will be: grew, house, knew, and would. Our reading vocabulary words are: curious, and idea. For spelling and phonics we will focus on the r-controlled vowel 'a' (harm, yarn).

We are continuing with our coin counting in math and will be coming up on a test early next week.

In social studies we will be reviewing the concept of needs vs. wants and the use of money as the basis of our trade system.

For science we will be doing the "fountain experiment" to see how air pressure will interact with water.

News for the Past Week

We started the week with our 3rd and final district quarterly exam. We took a portion of the test on 3 consecutive days. Of the 23 students taking the test 5 scored perfectly and altogether 19 students passed with a "proficient" rating.

We enjoyed a field trip to the Gene Autry Museum on Thursday and learned much about westward expansion and immigration.

On Friday we explored air pressure and got a feeling for how strong it can be and used it to launch small projectiles.

Unit 5 Week 1 Preview

We will be looking towards the sky to see what we can learn this week in our new unit on nature. We will read pourquoi tales from a few indigenous cultures. Our vocabulary words are: discover, dusk, mysterious, pale, and scatter. We will spell with r-controlled vowels. Our comprehension strategy will be to generate questions in order to develop the skill of identifying cause and effect. Our high frequency words will be: another, climbed, full poor, and through. We will discuss "voice" as a writing trait.

Topic 16 Math

You should have already received your child's Topic 16 math test at this point. All enrolled children present to take the test passed. The adjusted passing minimum score was 16.

Unit 4 Week 5 Preview

We will explore animals working in teams. Insects in colonies, cleaner fish, and the protective nature of herds are a few examples. We continue to work on narratives using a flow map to brainstorm beginning, middle, and ends to our creative response to literature stories. Our oral vocabulary words are: behavior, group, plead, soar, and vivid. In phonics we will continue work with long-vowel 'e' and use its spellings 'y' (sunny) and 'ey' (monkey). Our high frequency focus words are: also, because, blue, or, other, and until. We will analyze text structure in order to hone our retelling comprehension skill.

In spite of the fact we are still working on the weather unit in science, it will be necessary to overlap our 3rd unit and immediately begin our growing plants and animals-life-cycle unit.

In Social Studies our work with relative direction came in quite handy when we were left a map of sorts to a hidden stash before our break. We will continue work with maps intermittently in the coming weeks.

We will continue our study of coins and counting money in math as this concept will be covered in our next and final District Quarterly Math Exam which comes up in less than two weeks' time. The test appears rigorous yet fairly straightforward. We will soon be taking timed math tests as well to show our ability to apply math strategies learned this quarter.

Some of Room 11's work is currently being displayed in the main office for the month of April.