Unit 6 Week 1 Preview

In our last unit we will explore adventure itself. We will learn we can find adventure in our daily lives: in the places we go, in the things we learn to do, in our jobs as we grow, in very special days, and even in our imagination.

In week one, we will talk about the places people can go, how they get there, and what they do when they arrive. We will learn how we can gather information for report writing by interviewing people and other types of research. Our oral vocabulary words are: adventurous, anxious, inquisitive, insignificant, and route. In phonics we will focus on words with 'oo' spellings. Our high-frequency words will be: always, father, four, love, and mother. Our comprehension skill will again be visualizing in order for us to explain the difference between fantasy and reality, our comprehension strategy. In grammar we will learn about subjects and predicates.

In social studies we will discuss some basic economic concepts like goods and services, work and compensation, and how products come to market.

In math we will continue our work with regrouping in order to subtract.

Sixteenth Day

Today was a good and busy day in Room 11. We had a discussion of needs v. wants. The children were able to identify 4 basic needs: air, water, food, and shelter. We read a non-fiction selection called What People and Animals Need. We then took a dictation test on our '-an' and '-at' words and some sight words. Everyone is on target. We read a decodable non-fiction photo essay called Who Am I? We then read the main selection of the week, a fantasy, called Pam and Sam. We made a character analysis table in order to help retell the story in our own words. We were hesitant that this would work at first, but once we got going, we didn't want to stop. We are also learning to listen to each other's responses and to respond to those as well.

In math we used addition sentences and pictures to show the commutative property (we did not call it this). We are going to take our next math test on Monday, contrary to what was posted yesterday. The reason for this is that the last lesson of the Topic is quite involved and takes a while to get through. The children really should have time to go over the lesson at home before taking a test. However, this means a rare occasion for homework over the weekend. Homework in not usually collected on Monday, but an exception will need to be made. Those not having their homework on Monday will not be penalized, but those that do will be given credit.

We had our first formal science lesson today about matter. We discussed the 3 forms of matter (tested standard). We brainstormed a list of common examples of each form (tested skill).

I hope everyone has a good day off. Please remember that reading logs are due on Friday.