Classroom Snapshot for December

Happy New Year and welcome back! I hope that you had wonderful, safe, and restful break with your family. I cannot wait to hear all about everyone's celebrations, vacations, and fun events.

Here's what was been happening in our classroom throughout the month of December:

Reading:

Throughout the conclusion of Unit 2 of Treasures, the students have been working on determining the author's purpose of writing a story. We have learned that generally an author writes a book to either inform, entertain, or to persuade their reader. Before break, we were able to begin Unit 3 of Treasures. Together, the students have been working with the guided reading strategy of inferencing. Thus, the students have been learning how to derive logical conclusions about what they have read based off of the clues that are given to them. Throughout vocabulary time, the students have been working with finding context clues and working with synonyms.

Your child can click on the following links for additional activities with some of the stories we read together in December:

• Author: A True Story
• Stone Soup

Students will continue to bring home their weekly reading book bags. As a reminder, their homework assignment is to reread the story at home and afterwards have an adult ask them comprehension questions about what they have read. An adult is encouraged to utilize the comprehension questions that are listed in the back of the book or they can use the "Bloom's Taxonomy" questions that are inside of their child's bag. Please remind your student that a part of their homework assignment is to remember to return their book bag to school by Friday. If they finish reading their selection early, they are welcome to turn in their bag before the end of the week. Students are aware that points will be deducted from their weekly homework reading grade if their book bag is turned in late.

Grammar:

Over the past month the students have been working with learning how to combine two sentences together that utilize the same common noun. In addition, students are currently reviewing how to properly utilize action, present-tense, past-tense, and future tense verbs.

During Daily 5 time, the students had fun practicing these skills with the following web pages. Click on these links to view and play the web site games at home:

• Noun Dunk
• Balloon Verbs

Writing:

Students just completed Unit 1 of WEX right before Winter Break. Each student selected a second personal narrative piece from their WEX binder that they wanted to revise and enhance. Throughout the writing process, tips were shown how to make their revisions better. The students continued to make sure that their piece focused on one main event, had the proper sentence mechanics, and utilized showing details, strong verbs, and sensory details. Be sure to read their final revision piece that was sent home before break.

Math:

The students just completed Unit 4 that focused on the introduction of multiplication and division facts. Throughout the unit ,the students learned about multiples of equal groups, multiplication arrays, division ties to multiplication, and multiplication and division fact families.

Throughout the week leading up to break, the students also had a fun time becoming architects. Each student was asked to design several rooms or areas that they would want to have in a home. Through their designs, the students learned how to calculate how much the area and perimeter of their designed rooms would cost to build. Monetary values were assigned for the square footage and length of the areas and perimeters. In addition, they also had to figure in the cost of adding doors, windows, fences, etc. Through the process, we certainly realized how much money, time, and effort goes into building homes and room additions. We certainly have quite a talented bunch of architects in our room!

Social Studies:

We're so glad that many of you were able to come to our Midwest UbD Curriculum Snapshot. In case you were not able to make it or would like to see your child's movie again, please click here to view our newscasts.

Science:

After our Midwest Unit concluded, the students further explored about the prairie in Science. Throughout the unit, the students were introduced to the plants and animals that live in the prairie. We also tested and compared different types of soil that are suitable for plants growing in the prairie. The students further explored how seeds get dispersed and the basic concept of photosynthesis. Moreover, the students discussed the various types of adaptations animals have to have in order to survive in the prairie environment. Additionally, the students learned how life in the prairie continued because of the food chain. At the end of the unit, the students learned that not much of prairie land exists today because of environmental factors as well as humans destroying the land.

The class had a great time creating and sharing their animal adaptation projects. I truly enjoyed their creativity! I was so impressed! All of these projects will be hanging in the hallway for you to enjoy viewing.

A BIG THANK YOU goes to all of our parent classroom volunteers!

All of the Intermediate Teachers and I would like to personally thank Mrs. Filippelli for taking the time out of her busy schedule for us. She took on a huge job of organizing all of the volunteers in our school and physically moving our novel room book closet from downstairs to an upstairs closet. The job was a huge undertaking and we cannot thank her enough for her time and dedication to this task!

Our class had such a blast visiting the Museum of Science and Industry! A BIG THANKS goes to Mrs. Doty, Mrs. Silvestri, Mrs. Lennon, Mrs. Bolithon, and Mrs. Skuldt for chaperoning all of our groups. What a fun day we had and it couldn't have been done without all of their help!

We would like to thank Mrs. Moran, Mrs. Silvestri, Mrs. Orlyk, Mrs. Skuldt, Mrs. Collins, and Mrs. Doty for coming in to assist with our Reader's Theater groups in December!

I certainly appreciate Mrs. Bolithon, Mrs. Barretto, Mrs. Filippelli, and Mrs. Silvestri for coming in to make copies for our class too. We greatly appreciate your time!