December 7th Update

Upcoming Events

12/19 Holiday Shop

 12/20 Holiday Shop
Winter Party 2-3

12/21-1/6 Winter Break

Reading

We continued asking questions about characters by completing a character study this week. We read 4 different books, which exposed the students to a variety of character personalities. To relate to to our word choice, we have been working on in writing, we used a character trait list to describe the personality of each character with specific and creative word. The students combined all the personality traits they collected for each character. Today we voted and picked the 6 top personality traits for each character.

Here is our list:

Mean Jean: rude, angry, strict, evil, unfriendly and grouchy

Katie Sue: generous, wacky, silly, brave, serious and thankful

Hansel: smart, brave, sneaky, poor, helpful and loving

Gretel: loving, smart, thoughtful, nervous, giving and helpful

Gingerbread Man: wild, quick, sneaky, stubborn, lucky and bold

Fox: greedy, selfish, evil, wise, unfriendly and dishonest

Gingerbread Girl: generous, nice, friendly,fearful, smart, afraid

Writing

Friendly letters have been our main focus this week in writing. We spent time reviewing the 5 parts of a letter (date, greeting, body, closing and signature) and their correct placement. Each students was assigned a secret buddy to write letters to until December 20th. Each Tuesday and Thursday they will receive a new letter from their secret buddy. On the last day before break we will have a reveal activity.

We also used a brainstorm sheet to organize a letter to a solider. Today they students finished their final copy letters which will be sent to the troops.

Next week we will be working with writing using transitions. As the students become better writers their stories become longer. Transitions help students learn when to create new paragraphs and also help build fluency of their writing.

 

 

Math

We worked with place value. The students are able to read and write numbers up to a million.

We worked with both fractions and decimals this week. The students worked with base-ten block manipulatives to identify how tenths and hundredths relate to 1 whole. We also practiced writing equivalent fractions and decimals. The students were able to see tenths or hundredths to create a fraction or a decimal.

We used the following model to help us:

 

hundredths = ?/100 = . __ __

tenths = ?/10 = .__

two tenths = 2/10 = .2
twenty hundredths = 20/100 = .20 or .2
twenty-two hundredths = 22/100 = .23

**This is a complex but the students are not expected to have mastered. But it was just introduced to the concept. The students did a great job working with he manipulatives and we continue to work with this topic next week.

The students used the base ten flat to figure out how many hundredths were in each letter of their name. They then converted the hundredths into decimal and fraction form.

 

We will have the unit 5 test before winter break.

Science

How is weather different from climate?
The students worked hard to answer this questions this week. The students have been collecting and studying different types of weather the last few weeks. The students decided weather was the day to day change in the earth atmosphere. They then learned this week climate is the usual weather in a specific place over time. Information to determine a weather's climate has been determined by collecting information about the area's weather over a long period of time.

Next week we will study the characteristics which make up each of the different climate zones.

Social Studies
The students used personal recess conflicts to practice acting out their new conflict stoppers. Each conflict was examined to find the conflict starter. Small groups then acted out how a conflict stopper could successfully stopping the conflict.

Here are the 10 conflict starters and stoppers:

Have a wonderful weekend,

Mrs. Ray