South Elementary has been able to participate in taste testing sessions last year and we will continue to do so this year (thanks to a special grant). The purpose of these sessions is to expose students to different foods that are healthy for them and that they might not normally try. Many of the foods are then later offered in the hot lunch menu. Today the students were able to try blueberries, strawberries, and raspberries.
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Thank you for supporting the students at South by participating and attending the Christmas program. It's always a highlight of the holiday season. The students did a terrific job. Here are a few snapshots! We had a lot of fun on Monday celebrating our personal essays with one another. We each read our personal essays to our small group. The group then shared with us compliments about our pieces of writing!
In math this week we have been talking a lot about measuring length and volume. We learned how to measure to the nearest 1/4th inch. To do this, we learned how an inch is divided into 4 equal portions (just like a fraction).
We have also started to talk about volume (or capacity). We learned the different units used to measure volume including cups, pints, quarts, 1/2 gallons, and gallons. For homework this week the students are coming home with their normal Weekly Wednesday page and required math page. Just for fun (and a GREAT way to practice multiplication facts) I have included some cootie catchers. Your child can cut them out, fold them, and play with them with a family member or by themselves. Below you fill find directions on how to fold them. Students will also be bringing home their semi-new reading plans. Since October, the students have been learning how to make a reading plan, leave responses, and complete their log. All of these steps are help build successful readers. As adults, we keep a list of books we want to read, we think about the stories as we read, and we have bookshelves full of books we've read. These are the skills we are working towards! To help make this process a little less cumbersome, I have revamped the way our logs looks. First, you will see a PLAN for at school AND at home. Your child will be choosing books they want to read next and we will make a plan regarding how much they should read each day. As a class, we talked about what the word "plan" means. Some days we might be a little ahead of our plan, other days we might be a little bit behind our plans. However, it our goal to try and stick to our plans as much as possible. Please know that your child has at least 30 minutes to read each day in class in addition to what they are reading at home. Next, the students have spaces for their responses. It is expected that students leave a response for every chapter (fiction) or section (non-fiction). Again, this is something they have been working on for over a month now. They have sentence starters they should use in their take home binders (purple page). Finally, is the log you are used to seeing. I know this takes a little bit of time to complete, they are important for students to complete. We use them to review reading patterns, work with your child on their reading habits, and to make sure we are reading books that are truly just right for us. Your child will keep these in their take home binder, as we will fill them out at school and at home. They will receive a new one each Wednesday. I am hoping this new way of keeping track allows you to have a better understanding of what your child is doing at school, you will know what they are suppose to be reading at home, and we can continue to work on building responsibility.
We are switching gears a little bit in reading this month. We will be working a lot this month with non-fiction texts. Students will be learning how to preview these texts, predict what the chapters might be about, and how to read non-fiction features (captions, photos, graphs, bold words, etc).
Spelling Practice Fun Tip, Week 6: Snow Writing! Go outside and write your words with a stick in the snow!
This week our words will focus on the long "o" sound, like in soap. We will learn that you can spell the "o" sound using "oa" and with a bossy at the end of a word. Our next unit in math is all about measurement and data. Students will be learning how to measure the weight, length, and capacity of objects. We will be studying both customary and metric units. The goal of this unit is to make estimations about measurements that make sense. For example, it would make most sense to measure a book in inches, a bedroom in feet, and a car trip in miles. Later in the unit we will be learning about time and how to collect and present data using graphs. Attached below are the parent notes for this unit. |
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