Slow But Steady...

Some things in life just take longer than you think they will.

Math and Vocabulary
We are still working on the data surveys and making graphs in math.
We are still working on the vocabulary words from last week and will test on them this week.

Spelling
This weeks spelling concentrates on the dipthongs of "oy and oi". As a general rule the "oy" is in the middle or at the end of words and the "oi" is in the middle or at the beginning of words. Examples: joy, boy, soy, loyal, royal oil, oink, boil, soil, foil, spoil.

SS
In Social Studies we are studying time lines. The children will be making time lines of their life and of an average day. We will touch on time lines of various historical events.

Writing
Right now we are really trying to improve our writing skills. Today the students edited some of my writing and some of their own writing. I am encouraging them to write more. As this applies to their "News of the Week" if they are normally writing one sentence I am asking them to write 3-4 sentences. If they are normally writing one paragraph I am asking them to write 2-4 paragraphs. We are also working on doing better at remembering correct use of capitals and punctuation and checking our own spelling. Some of the students handwriting has really improved since the beginning of the school year. Others are still in need of some real effort to improve their handwriting.

Africa Reports and Projects
I hope you are helping your child read about their Africa topic. If they will keep notes each night in the Note Journal that I sent home last week they should then be able to use those notes to write their report. Each day when the Journal is sent back to school with an entry in it they will be rewarded with a token. I am trying to encourage this so that the project doesn't get left until the last minute. I want it to be an enjoyable learning experience for the students.

Heads Up For Next Week
Next week we will celebrate Dr. Seuss's Birthday on Tuesday and our 100th Day of School on Thursday. If your child or your family have any Dr. Seuss books they can bring them to school on Monday. (Please make sure their name or your family name is in the books.) We will be trying to read 100 books in school next week as part of our 100th week celebration. I will read a few to the class, they will each read 3-4 books and they may even read to each other or to me for us to accomplish our goal. We will also do several other activities related to 100.

Our keyword for this week is "February Final Week". I hope that those of you who read this copy of the blog will find it informative and helpful. I would hope more of you would join us for the online version each week. Thanks for all you are each doing to help your child to be successful in school.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's back to school we go....

Welcome back! I hope you all had a wonderful off track time. I now hope you are ready to learn, work, learn and have fun. This week's keyword is "Winter is Winding Down". Anyway I am hoping it is.

Spelling

Unit 16 Review of Short and Long Vowel Patterns

Short Vowels

a as in apple or bat

e as in elephant or met

i as in igloo or in

o as in octopus or on

u as in umbrella or under

CVC Consonant Vowel Consonant

CCVC, CCVCC, CVCC

Long Vowels

Vowels say their names – a, e, i, o, u

CVCe Consonant Vowel Consonant silent e

Vowel Teams – “When two vowels go walking the first one does the talking.” ai, ay, ee, ea, oa, ow, oe, ue,

Special rules – igh, ight, /u/ spelled ew

Other Vowel Sounds

ow, ou

Students will do several activities during the week where they will be given a list of words or words they find in a story. They will need to tell if the vowel sound is long or short and which of the above rules apply to the word. We will begin this study together as a class and then work for each student to become independent in this activity.

For example:

throat - long o - vowel team rule

chop - short o - CCVC

light - ling I - special rule “ight”

On Friday they will be given a list of words to do this with as a test. They will also be asked to spell 10 words that use a variety of these rules. You can practice with them at home on any words that follow these rules. They will not be given a specific list of words to learn. (memorize)

They will also be tested on these words: February, president, Valentines

One last note on the spelling - when they have a multi-syllable word such as "winter" - if they will break it into syllables the syllables follow the spelling rules or principles stated above. Example: winter has two syllables win-ter. The first syllable is a CVC pattern so the vowel is short. The second syllable has an r-controlled vowel "er". That is a principle we will be getting to soon.

Vocabulary

We will be reading a story called "Eat Your Vegetables". From it we will draw the vocabulary words:

ferocious

steadfast

lumbered

queasy

collaboration

relocate

This week we will also be learning about Presidents of the United States - particularly George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.

Africa

Look for the packet of information about the Africa report and project. Be sure to send back the paper with your child's choices of topic on it ASAP, but at least by Friday. I will assign the topics from their choices so that we don't have 5 reports on elephants, etc. Each week a homework page will come home telling what needs to be done on the report that week. This will help your child pace their efforts so that they will finish the report and project on time.

The due date for projects and reports is Monday March 29th. If students are finished I would love to have some turned in on Wednesday - Friday March 24th - March 26th so that we will not need to rush to hear all of the reports.

Math

In math we will be studying data collection and graphing. We begin by studying attributes and how we can sort things by their attributes. Example: Which children have blonde hair, brown hair or black hair, etc. or how many sides a shape has. They will be writing their own survey question with choices and surveying other students. Then they will us tally marks, a pictograph and a bar graph to represent the data.

We may even sort spelling words by spelling principles and graph them which will help them with spelling and be practice for the math concepts we are learning.

Home Reading Minutes and RRJ

Because the children will be reading to learn about the subject of their report, that reading will count as their reading minutes. Please continue to record minutes read on the yellow tracking sheets. However, because the children will be using what they read to write a report I will not be requiring the Reading Response Journal for the next few weeks.

Please continue with other homework such as: any math homework pages that come home - please complete and return the next day, practicing spelling and math facts, and playing the math games which will be distributed on Friday.