Classroom Update

Post date: Sep 4, 2011 5:11:29 PM

Well, we made it through week 1. We have been working within class in establishing rules and procedures and have been getting back into the school routine.

Thanks to everyone who brought in supplies. We are well stocked to begin the year. In seems that many were able to make the back to school icecream social. Unfortunately, I was unable to attend. (softball game)

We hope to see our parents at Back to School Night on Tuesday, 9/6 at 7:15 PM. I will do my best to keep this to 45 minutes. The updated back to school packet for this school year has been posted to the "curricula" link to the left.

Within computer lab this week, students were given two of their passwords for quia and for ixl. Quia will be used for our most of the times weekly spelling quizzes and also other quizzes and activties. IXL may be practiced both at school or at home.

Math

Our first chapter in math has students reading and writing numbers up to the millions. Within class we have been working on four different ways to write numbers. Ask your child what ways there are. A quiz was taken on Friday and returned for review. Basic facts tests for addition and subtraction will be taken this week. Students were also introduced to Board Math, a review and preview oral exercise that we will be doing this year. Our math workbooks should be arriving this week.

Language Arts

We wrote a little bit about our first day of school. We also read aloud Pumpkin Runner and while doing so, we practiced and reviewed some reading strategies that can be used while reading including predicting/inferring and summarizing. We also previewed the vocabulary for our first story, Akiak.

Social Studies

This year, we will be learning about the time, people, and places in California. We will be working on strategies to help students prepare for tests involving nonfiction material throughout the year. Each trimester will be a different unit with each unit containing two chapters.

Science

We worked through the first lesson within the science textbook. We will be doing a lab this coming week to continue to build upon what was presented within the book. In the computer lab, we also did a vocabulary game (crosssword puzzle) to help introduce more of the vocabulary of the chapter. Students completed (read and did) some work within their Interactive Textbooks (which is a version of a workbook) as homework to help review the material.