La Lectura

We read a great story, Niña ángel, niña dragón. This was a realistic fiction piece about a girls who’s family immigrated to the United States but she didn’t speak English.  This story told of how the girl adapted to her school and how once she started sharing about her family, the other students welcomed her and even helped her family.

Our learning objectives this week were to:

• work with the diphthongs: ie  and  ei
• work with cause and effect
• identify closed and open syllables
• identify pronouns and when we use them

Students received their second reader of the year.  They read with classmates and worked to identify pronouns within their two readers.

We will have a spelling test on our new words (received Thursday) on Friday, September 27th.

 

Las matemáticas

The kiddos did such an amazing job completing their math packets, working in stations, and completing their first test of the school year.  They took their test on Thursday and the entire class did an excellent job! Next up: Mental Math!!

We reintroduced Prodigy during our station time on Friday.  All students should have brought home a parent letter (on yellow paper) to remind the family how to login to student accounts.  Students also have their login information inside the front cover of their planner.

We will:

• rely heavily on composing and decomposing numbers (with number bonds)
• take weekly multiplication tests
• use prodigy to reinforce skills (during a twice weekly math stations)

 

This week students  were asked to look at their previously created list of possible ideas and choose one.  We talked about thick and thin questions and how ideas that required thicker questions would be better to research.  Students then chose their topic/idea, formulated their main question, and received teacher approval.  (We are learning the step-by-step process involved in research!)  Formulating their questions was really great because it made them really think about their purpose and even reconsider their topic.

Science

This week we learned to:

• Identify the Andromeda Galaxy as the closest spiral galaxy in our universe
• Describe gravity
• Describe the effects gravity has on Earth, within the solar system, and the universe
• Describe the characteristics of stars
• Compare and contrast our sun and other stars
• Describe a galaxy as a very large cluster of many stars
• Identify the Milky Way as our galaxy and Andromeda as the closest spiral galaxy in our universe
• Explain what constellations are and how useful they are
• Recognize and name important constellations in the hemisphere in which you live.

 

History & Geography

Our objectives this week were to:

• Describe the mouth and source of a river
• Refer to a map and identify the location of the Murray River
• List at least two ways people use the Murray River
• Understand the meaning of : drainage basin, orchard, vineyard and pasture