Thankful

Hello Room 4 families! Hope you are all looking forward to the holiday season and the family time that is approaching with some time off from school and hopefully some time off from work for you! I want to thank so many of you for attending the potluck and those of you who have visited or are planning to visit to share about your family and your traditions. I am so thankful to have such wonderful families as part of our classroom community! Here is a look at our learning for this week and the short two day week before the Thanksgiving break:

ELA and Writing:

We will be wrapping up unit 4 before the Thanksgiving break. Students have been working on character traits and retelling of stories during their differentiated guided reading time. Students have used Story Grammar Marker to retell and then completed a comprehension packet that goes along with each book they have read. Asking students to respond to their stories in writing builds both their comprehension and writing skills. We have worked on memory words and pattern words ending in -le, -ng, -er and the 3 sounds of -ed (/d/, /ed/ and /t/). 

Students are continuing their work on their "How To" story and will completing it before the break. Students are using: First, Next, Then and Last to talk about their steps and adding warnings and helpful hints. Students are also adding a section to their stories: About the Author, where they share info about themselves. Students are working on punctuation and capitalization. When we get back, students will work on sentence writing and build a stronger understanding of the parts of a sentence and what makes a complete sentence.

Math:

Students will be wrapping up  unit 4 for math before the break. Students have been learning their doubles facts (1+1=2, 2+2=4....) and their near doubles facts (doubles +1), which include 2+2+1/4+1=5. Some students have worked on breaking apart numbers into their doubles pairs and their doubles plus one pairs: 4=2+2 or 5=4+1. When we get back from the break we will dive into our unit on subtraction.

Social Studies:

Students have been learning about families, mostly first hand. We have had so many families and staff members volunteer to speak! It is neat for students to see that everyone's family is so different and how we define a family is different than they thought when we started this unit. Students are in the process of creating a beautiful multi-step family portrait. It is a fun way to infuse art into the unit! When we return from vacation we will wrap the unit up and then start a science unit on air, wind and weather.

Hope you have a great Thanksgiving for those who celebrate it! I also take a little time to think about all the things I am thankful for and how lucky I am! Hope you get to spend some time with your family and awesome Room 4 kids!

Wish List:

-Dry Erase Markers
-Extra Snack
-Tissues