Crittenden's Critters
Weekly Updates from Room F7!
Dates to Remember
*Thursday, October 23 & Friday, October 24th- Creepside Haunted Trails
*Tuesday, October 27- Minimum Day for Professional Teacher Growth
*Friday, October 30- Halloween Parade and Classroom Party
*Week of November 2nd-6th- Book Fair
*Wednesday, November 11- Veteran's Day: No School
Big Buddies
Arts Attack
Wonderful Writers
Scholastic Reading Book Club
Please go to www.scholastic.com/readingclub.com to place orders. Our one time class code to enter is PBC6D. If you are thinking of donating books to our classroom, you can also peruse the Class Wish List here . All October orders are due by Tuesday, October 20th. Happy Reading! :)
Friday Mystery Readers!
Want to be a Mystery Reader? It is SO easy to do and the kids love it! Simply follow this link to sign up on our Google Doc for the date that you would like to be our guest of honor! Indicate whether you would like to bring a book from home or if you would like to borrow a book from class. Our usual Mystery Reader time is from 3:05-3:20 on Friday afternoons. However, this time would not work for you, we can be flexible with times in order to fit you in.
I can't wait to see the children's faces every Friday as we surprise them with Mystery Readers!
Weekly Curriculum Update
Math- Cubs will be working with Ms. Otto on counting and problem solving. Each Cub has a math journal that they will be working in every day for problem solving. It is an excellent way to see their thought processes and the strategies that they are using to solve the problem. They will also be familiarizing themselves with tens frames and how to look at groups of tens and ones.
Bears will be starting Math Workshop with me. They will have three tasks to do every day after our mini lesson: Math Writing (which consists of a journal prompt to show mathematical thinking), Math by Myself (often an activity to reinforce the concept I am teaching), and Math with Someone (a meaningful tasks math game or activity that they play with a partner to deepen their understanding of the concept). We will be focusing on addition, subtraction and equations for this week.
Reading-
Literature- We will be talking about concepts in both fictional and non-fictional texts. In our fictional texts, we will be discussing character, setting, problem/solution, and big events in the story. These are critical pieces of comprehension for fictional books that children need to have a deep understanding of. In non-fiction, we will be review what we learned about connections from last week, and we will also be discussing the importance of asking questions as we read.
Foundational Skills- The students did so well on their first spelling test. I will be sending them home this week. These spelling tests are merely to help me understand who is understanding the concept we are going over and who needs a bit of help. I will be meeting in small groups with students who seemed to need a little trouble based on their tests. We will be moving on to a new concept for each grade. Cubs will now be learning about digraphs for the next two weeks. Bears will be learning about the bonus letter rule and the glued sound of -ALL. At the end of this week, I will be giving a "check-up" to see who is grasping the concept and if we need to spend a little more time on it. More information about these new concepts will be included in the homework this week.
Writing- Narratives are such a critical piece of the writing process for beginning writers. We will be continuing to discuss characteristics of narratives and going through the writing process. Students will practice thinking of a moment to write about and expanding it to include details. They will also learn that writers go back over their work to make sure it makes sense and sounds the way they want it to sound. We will also be going over the conventions of writing and what a basic sentence needs (capital letter, punctuation, etc).
Social Studies- We will be continuing our discussion on diversity and community. Diversity is a word that I really want the children to understand. In the next couple of weeks, we will also be discussing maps and how they help us in our communities around the world.
Science- Our themes this month REALLY lend themselves to science and I am SO excited about it!! This week, we will be continuing to build our scientific skills of observing, asking questions and creating a hypothesis. Throughout the month, we will have several experiments and studies into pumpkins, the pumpkin life cycle, and the needs of animals as depicted in our nocturnal animal studies.
Have A Question? Contact Me!
Email: scrittenden@powayusd.com
Location: 12362 Springhurst Drive, San Diego, CA, United States
Phone: (858)-391-2607