For your future planning…

We will be taking an all-day field trip to the Detroit Zoo on Wed., May 25.  Details to come-I just wanted you to have the date.  Parents chaperones are welcome.

I can hardly believe that I am writing MAY!  Time sure goes fast around here!

READING-Unit 10, final unit, is all about I Know A Lot!  This week’s theme is Show What You Know.

READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY-Monitor Comprehension:Reread

READING COMPREHENSION SKILL: Use Illustrations to support reading and Writing

SPELLING- We will be working with the __ ad chunk.  bad  lad  had  mad  glad  Dad (need  to have a Capital Letter at the beginning)  me  where

MATH-We will continue with Fluency with addition up to 20.  You can work with this at home…it does NOT need to be written out..just have fun playing mental games with it in the car, or out for a walk, or while you’re waiting for older brother’s soccer game, or dance rehearsal to be over, or big sister’s concert, or…  Same convenient opportunities with practicing Spelling Words.  🙂

Speaking of Spelling, the students are doing very well with their Spelling Words.  Most are getting 100% on their weekly tests.  Thanks for the support at home.  They are so pleased and proud when they see their score and the sticker.

SCIENCE-The 3 states of matter…Solid, liquid, gas

Looking ahead…

Monday-My students will be taking their final MATH NWEA Assessment.  Next Monday will be Reading. Please feed them a good breakfast and early bedtimes will be helpful!

Friday-Bagels With Mom 9:15 am  in our classroom  It will run about 30-45 minutes.  Hope you can come!

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Smith

“All we have is all we need.

All we need is the awareness

of how blessed we really are.”

-Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Be An Example…

Show kindness to unkind people.

Forgive people who don’t deserve it.

Love unconditionally.

Your actions always reflect who you are.”

Check out how we are “bowling” in Math.  Grab some 10 golf tees and a small ball at the Dollar Store and you can play this game at home.

We have been learning a lot about Ocean Animals, Plants, and Fish.   The students have made individual packets about different fish, plants, and animals.  From those Information Packets they wrote 3 sentences about an Ocean Fish and 3 more sentences about an Ocean Animal.  Today they put everything together and we published their writing.  It was a lot of hard work but very rewarding!

Here’s a look at the authors writing an Informational piece about Ocean Fish and Animals.

For the next 3 weeks we will be having a can/bottle drive for our school.  If you would like to donate any empty pop cans or bottles, please send them in with your child for our school collection.  The money that we receive from turning in the bottles will be used to purchase flowers for the front of our school.

Thank you.

We have had a wonderful 2 weeks exploring the Ocean.   The students are quite knowledgeable about ocean fish, ocean plants, and ocean animals.  Today, my class looked like a high school English class!  They used their notes from this week to write 3 sentences about an ocean fish or animal.  their writing is fantastic!  They had to write about where the fish/animal lives, what the fish/animal eats, and is it a fish or an animal.  As they used their notes, they looked like they were writing a term paper.  Lots of thought and independent work.  Not every student is writing about the same fish/animal.   Then there are the mechanics of writing…capital letters at the beginning of sentences and punctuation at the end of sentences.  Whew..there is a lot going on in here.

We are now creating a chart that shows the 4 different depths of ocean waters and the animals that live in each zone. More to come on that next week.  why do certain fish/animals live in the Sunlight Zone and not the Twilight Zone?  Why the Midnight Zone and not the Abyss Zone?  Stay tuned…

READING COMPREHENSION-Rereading (We have to do a lot of Rereading to understand some of this information.)

READING SKILL-Using Illustrations (We are using lots of illustrations to help us understand all of this Ocean information!)

SPELLING WORDS-  with  my   pen   den   hen   men   then   when

MATH-ADDENDS    Missing numbers  11 + 6= 17     11 & 6 are addends

-We also will work with fluency in Subtraction up to 10.  You can work with this at home.

SCIENCE-The Ocean

-our Plants

This week the students will also be taking the District Writing Prompt.  You can help by having them eat a good breakfast and to school on time.

That’s our week.  Happy Earth Day today!

Mrs. Smith

Shhh…I think Spring is finally here!  It’s lovely to be outside without wearing heavy coats and hearing the birds sing and smelling the flowers after a rain. I hope you can enjoy some of this sunshine and goodness this weekend.

READING-ANIMALS NOW AND THEN will be our week’s theme.  We’ll focus on the dinosaurs.

READING COMPREHENSION STRATEGY-Ask Questions

READING COMPREHENSION SKILLS- Distinguish between Fantasy and Reality and Using Text Features

WRITING-We will continue to write good, descriptive sentences, using an informational source.  (You remember writing like this when you were in Kindergarten, right??!!)  My students are doing a fantastic job with their writing!  I tell them to “write 3 sentences about something that a fish has” and they play a game with me as to how many sentences, more than 3, that they write.  The sentences are good, too!!

SPELLING-Wow…another area of great success!  Almost all of the students are scoring 100% on the weekly spelling tests!  Way to go parents!  The kids benefit from your home involvement and support.

This week’s words are:    rap  tap  cap clap  help  earth  has  she + 2 “cold words.”

SCIENCE-Dinosaurs and Earth Day

Looking ahead…

Week of April 25   District Wide Writing Assessment  This will be an Informational Piece of Writing to be completed over 3 days.  Please help your child be well rested, eat a good breakfast, and be at school on time.

Week of May 2     NWEA testing

Thank you for all you are doing on the home front.  I notice your “handiwork” and they students benefit.

Enjoy your weekend.

Mrs. Smith

I’m sorry about last week’s post…I must have forgotten to hit “Publish” after I finished writing it so it never got to you.  So sorry about that!

Unit 9 of AMAZING CREATURES is up for next week.  Our theme is The Amazing Ocean.  We’ll discuss what kind of animals live in the ocean, what kind of animal has fins, a shell, claws, tentacles…

WRITING-Descriptive Sentences   Students will be writing about different fish and using descriptive words.  Students should be writing at least 3 sentences by now on a given topic.

For example, “Whales are huge animals that live in the ocean.

Whales have gills.

Whales have a blow hole.”

If you have any books that you would like to share on this topic, please send them in with your child.

WORDS- has  look  fish  pot  cot  hot  got  plot     

***Please note*** Kindergarten Spelling words will now be 8 practiced words (HOT WORDS) and 2 unknown words (COLD WORDS-from the word chunk family of the week.)  As you can see, we will be working with the “ot” word chunk family next week.  To get ready for the “COLD WORDS”, use the “ot” chunk and form new words.  Have your student spell the words.  This will help solidify the word chunk family for the week.

LETTERS-X  x  V  v

SCIENCE-We will continue with our Plant Observations and recording our findings.  We are Scientists!

We also will begin discussing Earth Day.  Look for a project to come home about Earth Day.

  We went “Buggy” this week!

Look who is 6 years old!  Emily Montierth-April 4th

Enjoy your weekend!

Mrs. Smith