Elephant Classroom News
October 14, 2016
Homework:
Remember, their 5 individualized spelling words are handwritten in on the front cover of their packet. They should study these words for their spelling test next Friday. There are additional spelling pattern words to practice inside their packet and updated on Spelling City.
I have included a two-sided page to keep at home or in your child's folder with a new spelling activity choice board and writing ideas for October.
Field Trip:
What We're Learning in 9-103:
Thematic Unit: We wrapped up Apples in September and have begun a fun and exciting Bat Unit. We are extending our study of bats across all subjects in reading, math, writing, art, and science. Earlier this week, we read the fictional story Stellaluna about a baby bat who is separated from her mother and lives with a bird family. We used it to practice sequencing parts of a story and also to discuss the differences and similarities between bats and birds. Some students were very surprised to learn that bats are mammals and not birds!
This week we also did a drawing lesson and learned how to draw a bat. We extended our art project to learn about parts of a bat and labeled our drawings. We shared our schema (background knowledge) of bats and made a list of all the information we'd love to explore and find answers to throughout our bat unit. We are excited to learn new vocabulary about bats in the coming week, learn about all the various kinds of bats, and more!
Language Arts: It's all about nouns right now! We are practicing identifying nouns within sentences as well as classifying nouns are people, places, and things.
Reading: We are taking our Star Reading tests on the computer to determine our Accelerated Reading reading levels. This is helpful in picking out books from our school library. We also are continuing to work on picking just-right books and developing our stamina for reading independently.
Phonics: We are continuing to work on our letter sounds, blending and segmenting sounds, as well as beginning some work with blends and digraphs. We are working on using our phonics knowledge to help us spell and read new words that we encounter in our writing and our reading.
Helpful Websites/Apps:
More Math Apps/Websites:
Apps:
Sushi Monster
Splash Math
Math Bingo
Math Ninja
Motion Math: Hungry Fish
A Math Regrouping App: Addition and Subtraction
Top-It
Mathmateer
Websites:
Xtramath.org (flyers with student log-ins came home a while back, if you need your student's information re-sent, please e-mail me!)
Sumdog.com
Mrs. Sarich
Email: asarich@lvcs.org