Class Activities for the Week of November 1st-5th

Greetings students and parents,

Thank you to all the parents who took the time Friday to come to Discovery for our student-led conferences.  It was great to see everyone and talk about everything that we've worked on over this past 1st quarter of school.  To the parents who were not able to meet on Friday, could you please contact me as soon as possible with an appropriate time when we might meet.  Thanks!

Class Activities This Week:

Math:

Our next chapter in math will focus on multiplying and dividing larger numbers.  This week we will continue to practice our mental math skills by working on our break down method of multiplying and learning how to multiply large round numbers with more than one zero, such as 4 X 7000.  We will also be practicing our 'algorithym method' multiplying 3 digit by one digit numbers, and learning when it is best to use mental math and when it is best to use the algorithym.  Finally we will practice solving word problems using the 'try, check, revise' problem solving strategy.


Reading:

We will be switching our reading focus this week to non-fiction books.  We will be talking about the importance of being able to read and understand non-fiction reading material, and practice reading books to find information.  Our 'reading letter' this week will be used to write about all the information that the students were able to find in their chosen non-fiction text.

Writing:

We will be working on writing using similes, (which we had planned to do the previous week but didn't get to due to all the fun stuff happening at discovery last week).  We will also be learning how to properly take notes when reading for information in our non-fiction texts.  These 'notes' will then serve as the basis for the material we write about in our 'reading letter'.

Social Studies:

Our current social studies unit is on immigration.  Specifically American immigration.  To study immigration we will be performing a play based on the famous book, 'First Stop Ellis Island'.  We will also be studying a novel entitled, 'In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson'.  Both the play and this novel give the students some historical background into immigration in America and perspective of what it meant to be an immigrant in a America.  This unit also gives us a chance to draw on some of our own personal experiences of moving to a foreign country.  We will also be contrasting 19th and 20th century American immigration with the very first American colonists who came to the new world....just in time for Thanksgiving!!

This week we will continue our discussion about what we know about immigration, and introduce our play, 'First Stop Ellis Island'.

Grammar:

We will be working on creating 'complex sentences' using conjunctions: because, while, before, and after.

Spelling:

Our spelling words are focused on the soft C and G sounds.  The words are:

ceiling, giraffe, celery, gem, gentleman, center, citrus, general, cereal, gingerbread, cement citizen, genius, circle, certain.

Character Studies:

Our character studies focus this week will be on INTEGRITY

I hope everyone has an excellent week!!   Thanks for reading,

Jordan Rose