Week 2 and 3

Well, we are in the third week of school and we are busy, busy, busy. What a fantastic class we have!

Last week was packed with learning! In Language Arts, we continued to write in our journals, and explored the power of language. Specifically, we talked about descriptive writing, and the use of vivid adjectives in making our writing magnetic. Ask your child about salsa words. I am sure s/he can give you examples. In Math, we began our unit on Data and Graphing by creating a class graph, brainstorming what information we can extract from the graph and then collecting data from our classmates and constructing individual bar graphs. In Social Studies, Ms. Reed began a unit on Virginia, beginning with Virginia geography. What a treat to have her for that time! And in Science, Ms. Lockwood continued with rivers, introducing Meade Creek and talking about the watersheds in Virginia. We were supposed to spend more time exploring Meade Creek on Friday but the weather decided otherwise. Hopefully this week. We made invitiations for grandparents and special friends, started Morning Meeting, did yoga and kickboxing during P.E., and met with our Book Buddies for the first time.

This week in Language Arts, we are diving into our summer books. We talked about what it means to be a book critic and the components of a book review. Each child will be writing his/her own book review of a book s/he read over the summer. This project will introduce the Writing Process as we will go through each step to get to our final product. In addition to this writing project, we will begin Book Groups on Thursday. Our first book is Dear Mr. Henshaw, another Newberry Award winner. The class will read the book at home and will meet in groups to talk about it at school. Your child can read the assigned pages independently or you can read them together. In Math, we are continuing with Data and Graphing. We are working on interpreting graphs and using the information to problem solve. These kiddos are impressive. Today, when looking at a bar graph and figuring out what information we could take from it, one child said, "Well, we inferenced from the graph that Pups Place has the best pizza." And, there were many other insightful responses as well. We also introduced two new math games. Adria brought in Yamslam, an exciting dice game and Tomas brought in Battleship, which is great practice for the kids as we will be playing Battleship on coordinate grids to end our graphing unit. Thank you for sharing with our class!

I hope the DLA folders are working out. This week will bring additional Daily Learning Activities. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

A few notes and reminders:

- Please make sure your child has a water bottle each day. The kids are so active and need it throughout the day. Thank you for the large bottles of water that have been contributed.

- Please make sure your child has tennis shoes every day. It is not fun walking to and from Meade Park in sandals (I speak from experience).

- On Tuesday, we will be staying at Meade Park to explore the creek for Science. We will be back by 3:00.

- We are planning a field trip to the Rivanna River for Friday, October 14th. I will send out the details next week.

- We have started Morning Meeting and the kids can sign up to share. This is a great time to bring in that special something from home.

- Back to School Night is next Wednesday, October 5th from 6:30 - 8:30.



That is it for now. Look for photos in the next blog. I should have it figured out by then.


Have a great week!


Best,

Annelise