Week of October 23

Dear Parents –

Welcome back!  I hope you had a wonderful break and enjoyed spending time with friends and family. 

Here’s a peek at our week ahead:

Monday, Oct. 23 – No School (Faculty In-service)

Tuesday, Oct. 24 (Day 4) – Art and PE (Swimming)

Wednesday, Oct. 25 (Day 5) – Library and World Language

Thursday, Oct. 26 (Day 6) – Music and PE

Friday, Oct. 27 (Day 1) – Art and World Language

Our next Mini Academies are scheduled for Monday, October 30 from 1:30 – 2:30.  We still have a few spaces available.  Please sign up by this Friday if you are interested in leading an activity.  You can sign up here – 2AS Mini Academy Sign Up Sheet. 

Reader’s Workshop

Our reading lessons this week continue to focus on becoming a more fluent reader.  Students will learn more about using punctuation to help change the rate and pitch of their speech.  We’ll talk about the importance of using punctuation cues to scoop the text into longer, meaningful phrases.  We will end our focusing on how readers can use dialogue to help them understand how the characters sound.  This week students will continue to practice their reader’s theater skit to help improve their fluency.

Writer’s Workshop

This week we begin our second writing unit on Lab Reports and Science Writing.  We’ll learn about what it means to write like a scientist.  This week we’ll focus on asking questions, thinking about what might happen during an experiment and forming a hypothesis, the steps needed to conduct the experiment, and writing about what they learned from the experiment.  Students will watch scientific demonstrations and use the experience to write an initial lab report. 

Science

This week we will explore the properties of solids, liquids, and gases.  Students will have some time to explore the different states of matter and record what they learned and questions they have about each.  We’ll end our week with a demonstration on how matter can change from one state to another. 

Math

We start our second math unit this week with students using different strategies to practice their basic math facts.  We’ll look at Number Bonds, Name Collection Boxes, games and puzzles to help kids develop automaticity and fluency with their basic addition and subtraction facts.  We will also begin looking at the different structures of story problems. Most students are familiar with story problems with an unknown result, but this week we will also begin learning about how to solve problems with an unknown start and an unknown change.  During our work with problem solving, students will be introduced to the PEA and CUBES strategy to help them solve problems.  Be sure to ask them what these strategies are and how they use them in class. 

Dinner Questions

What do scientists do?  What are you most interested in exploring about solids, liquids, and gases?

What does it mean to read fluently? 

Could you teach me how to do something?  What materials do I need?  What are the steps?