15-Nov. 18-22, 2019

Special Announcement-We have some special volunteer opportunities coming up. We are wrapping up our geology unit and are doing a project with clay. Miss Lofquist will celebrate her last day with us Thurs. Nov. 21. Our class is working on a special project for her. Please let me know if you're available at all, am or pm to volunteer in our class this week. The following Wednesday, Nov. 27, we will do a 1st Thanksgiving Celebration in the morning or afternoon (depending on parent availability) with stations related to Wampanoag and Pilgrim life. I hope to have at least 2 or 3 parents to help run a couple of these stations. Additionally I hope to start Art Adventures after Thanksgiving break if there is a parent volunteer who would be interested in that. Please email me if you are free for any of this. Thank you!!!

Holiday Concert: Mark your calendars! The holiday concert is December 18th at 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Preludes start at 8:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m.

Cold Weather: Thank you for remembering to dress your child for being outside for at recess and any other adventures we go on. Snowpants, coat, boots, hat, and mittens/gloves are necessary!

Junior Great Books: A small slip will go home Friday, requesting volunteers for Junior Great books. This is an enrichment opportunity for stronger readers. Any parent, grandparent or other special adult is welcome to volunteer. The training session to be a JGB leader is the beginning of December. The meetings/story discussions with the students will begin in January after break, lasting approximately 6 weeks-meeting once per week.

This Week: We welcomed, Henry's dad, to talk about his service in the army. Everyone wrote questions to ask. I was impressed that they were still asking questions after 30 minutes. We're also wrapping up our geology and citizenship units and will do the assessments. We are shifting over from doing a lot of science to more social studies. As we learn about our homes, families, and neighbors, we'll also disover different ways maps are used. We'll be learning about culture and what that means for each of us in class. We did take advantage of the warmer weather to walk and compare different houses. Students by the end of the week will be introduced to Wampanoag and pilgrim culture relating to home and family life in the past compared to the present. Thursday is our good bye and good luck celebration for our student teacher Miss Lofquist.

Reading: We are finding text evidence, and identifying Main Idea and details. This week’s theme is about maps, directions and how we find our way around our homes, neighborhoods, and cities. We’re reading different genres of text from fiction to non-fiction and beginning to compare texts.

Writing: It has been fun to work on a class narrative writing project about Easton's bear experience. We are doing our own narrative writing and discussing how to communicate our ideas by giving more details as we write about our family and home. We’re working on starting with a main idea, and adding 3 or more details . We’ll continue to look for capitalization, spacing, word order and punctuation. Encourage your child to underline words they are unsure how to spell. Students are also learning about nouns(naming words), both common and proper, the plural form of adding -s or -es.

Phonics/Sight Words/Spelling: “ch, tch, wh, ph”, what, when, which, catch, match, graph, with, wish, many, around Challenge: home, family, neighbor

Sight Words:around, by, many, place, walk, red, black, blue, six, ten 

Reading Vocabulary(oral): locate, route, height, model, separate

Reading Comprehension: Main Idea and Details 

Social Studies Vocabulary(oral): home, family, immediate, extended, neighbor, neighborhood, directions, culture

Mathematics: Students are learning math mountains and how to use them to solve equations and story problems. Math Mountains help students identify the known and unknowns (unknown total, partner 1 or partner 1). The structure of a math mountain has the total at the top and at the base, Partner 1 is to the left and Partner 2 is to the right. They are also learning how to solve story problems and write their own both addition and subtraction. We are practicing how to show a proof, equation, answer, and label. We'll focus on numbers 1-10.

Science: We enjoyed investigating the soil in the Congdon stream, woods by the garden shed, and in the garden boxes. We'll continue to finish our geology assessment and learn from those who did a geologic challenge. There were a number of games that we are excited to play. Great job to all those junior geologists!

Other: SNACKS. Please remember to pack the snack in the backpack pouch and not their lunch box. Their morning snack is to go in their mailbox in the am. Please remember they have limited time to eat a snack and multiple snacks are too much.

Other School News: Please go to the Congdon Home page for more details about what is happening at our school https://www.isd709.org/congdon-elementary