Week of January 24

READING:

We are reading the story "The Legend of the Persian Carpet". We are working on vocabulary, discussing the characteristics of legend/folk tale, and studying cause and effect. Keep reading nightly and record on the Reading Calendar to be turned in on Monday in the Red Folders. Remember to read for AT LEAST 15 minutes on 3 separate nights....HAPPY READING! ")

WRITING:

We are going to write our own "my dream" speech after reading about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech. We will also be working on singular and plural possessive nouns. We continue to work on writing Weekend Reports every Monday and Squiggles every Wednesday. We are focusing on writing a complete sentence with a capital letter, a complete thought, and an endmark. We are also learning to use graphic organizers to help with our prewrites. With every sentence we write, we try to think of one good detail sentence to add to our stories.  The kids LOVE winning Squiggle Puppy...We look for GREAT details, CORRECT capitalization and punctuation, and a great story! :)

SPELLING:

Don't forget to study your words... our test is on Wednesday. This week's words:

chin                reach               shine                        BONUS WORDS: prescription

check              teacher           shy                                                            nicotine

checkers        march             brush

chicken          shape              finish

beach              shark              machine                                                                                                                      

If you're on a challenge list... make sure you check your agenda for the word list. All word lists are posted weekly in the agenda.

MATH:

We continue to learn all about multiplication and how to create arrays, models, and skip counting. We are making flashcards in our classroom to practice our facts and today we discussed the importance of learning our math facts and that will become a good habit and give us FACT POWER!!!!!!!!! We will continue to look for patterns and look at repeated addition as well as looking at fact families in multiplication and division. PLEASE start studying MULTIPLICATION FACTS AT HOME...we are starting to take timed tests. There are 25 to 30 problems and the kids get 3 minutes to master the facts. A GREAT site to practice and even take tests right on the computer is multiplication.com. We continue to work  on place value and higher numbers in place value. We will be also learning how to use decimal points.

HEALTH: 

We continue to learn about drugs and alcohol. Specifically, we are studying the effects of tobacco on our body.  Our motto is: "If you never start, you never have to stop!" The unit test is on Friday, February 4.

HANDWRITING:

We are still working on learning our lowercase letters in cursive! They are doing great! Keep practicing and check out the link for Handwriting Without Tears for helpful hints and practice tips. Click Here.