What We Did This Week?

Dear Families ~

Every week we focus on a specific phonics skill, math skill, vocabulary word(s), and/or reading comprehension skill. This section of the blog can be an excellent place for you to quickly find out what we are focusing on in the week. Please check it often and review it with your child. The revision with you at home will help the children deepen their understanding of the skill.

Week of November 17, 2008

Word Study: Synonyms and Antonyms.  If your child has mastered this, ask them to quickly explain homophones and homonyms (we stumbled upon one today "letter" during our social studies exploring time) - ask them to explain.  :)

Comprehension: Connections, connections, connections and now let's visualize!  Visualize is to draw a picture in your mind using the words of the author insteach of paintbrushes and coloring pencils. 

Good Readers...

•  Make Connections
• Visualize

Vocabulary: Have student share kid-friendly definitions with you on the following words:

• oceans
• continents
• rough draft
• visualize 

Writing:

Mechanics

Question marks vs. a period. When to use which?

Writing Process

Focus of this month ~Organization: Can you put on your shoes before your socks.

Good Writers use...

1. Ideas: clarity and details
2. Organization: in order

Spelling: words with double consonants.

Math:  Subtraction Number Stories.  

Key words that tell you to subtract: 

1. how many more,
2. how many left,
3. what is the difference 

Social Studies: We began our continent and ocean study. Ask your child to name all the continents. In the next weeks we will be learning to accurately locate the on a world map. Test on Dec. 18th! Start studying...

Our exploring stations were in full swing this week... some pictures for your viewing.

The students will be exploring through these five stations in the next couple of weeks.  Some students have even accepted the challenge to spell all the continents accurately!  I can't wait to see if someone can do it in our classroom! 

Our Picture(s) of the Week...

We put the dates our ancestors came to the United States in order from the earliest to the latest.  Extending our study of timelines from last quarter.