October, 2009

This month has been dedicated to so many learning activities. We have been reading daily and working on building our comprehension skills. We have been reviewing story mapping and retelling strategies. This has worked beautifully with our Writer's Workshop. We are currently working on writing a Halloween story. We have also looked at nonfiction text and done some notetaking and summarizing information we read. In math, we have been working weekly on our addition strategies; as well as, learning about regrouping in addition. In the next couple of weeks we will be doing subtraction with regrouping. This is so much harder for some of the students to understand; but we will work on this skill until we understand the concept. For Word Work we have been reviewing long and short vowels plus reading our poems for fluency practice. We have two in school field trips in science this month. During the first field trip we will learn about Matter and in the second one we will be learning about Force. As you can see we are extremely business. The one thing we are looking forward to is hopefully having a few days of sunshine and recess on the playground. Oh what fun that would be after all of the rain we have had.

Please continue to have your child read daily and practice their basic math facts. One of our school goals this year is to increase the students math skills in basic addition and we can all work with the children to become proficient in their basic math facts.

WOM: RESPONSIBILITY

WOW: CHEERFULNESS/POSITIVE ATTITUDE

ACCOUNTABILITY

HONOR

SCHOOL PRIDE/CLEANLINESS