Writing

The students have been working hard on their personal narratives. This week we've been looking at how other authors use comparisons, alliteration, and sounds words to make their writing more powerful. Check out a few of their revisions:

Science - Food Chains

The students learned about food chains. We talked about predators and prey. Then they made a food chain to show how energy passes through living things.

The Caterpillars Have Arrived!!

Our caterpillars arrived on Thursday and we took a few minutes to observe them. The students wrote about what they observed!

They changed over the weekend and they are a lot bigger!

Math News

We will be finishing our unit on Applying Addition and Subtraction Concepts today. We will review today and tomorrow and the Chapter 1 test will be on Wednesday, September 30th. We've been working on fact fluency with addition facts and we will be moving to subtraction facts later this week. The students have been setting a goal and graphing their results over the last few weeks. I'm happy to say 17students completed 30 addition facts correctly in 2 minutes. We started with the facts with sums to 10 and ALL have improved. I'm proud of their hard work!!

Science

We started our Animal Unit last week. The students are learning about different animal groups. We talked about animals with and without backbones. Then we discussed the characteristics of mammals, amphibians, reptiles, birds, fish and insects. Today we talked about how animals use different body parts to protect themselves. The students loved the "elk ear" activity. They snapped their fingers near their ears. Then they used the elk ear which is much larger than our ears and they found that the snapping sound is louder with the elk ear. The students shared how they thought this could help the elk find food or get away from predators!

Reading Stamina

We've been working on our reading stamina the last few weeks. As you can see from our graph, our stamina goes up and down. Our class goal is to read for 20 minutes without getting up or talking to another student. Dr. Parker will bring her puppy Sawyer to visit our class when we meet our 20 minute goal for 3 days

in a row! The students are very motivated so hopefully we'll have Sawyer visit soon!

Daily Schedule

Our Daily Schedule has change a bit from Curriculum Night. 

8:30 - 8:50 Morning Math

8:50-10:00 Reading Workshop

10:00 - 11:00 Writing Workshop 

11:05 - 11:40 Lunch and Recess

11:40 - 12:40 Math

12:40 - 1:30 PE/Health(A),  Technology and Library (B), PE (C), Music (D), or Art (E)

1:30 - 1:45 Read Aloud

1:45 - 2:30 Science or Social Studies

2:30 - 2:50 Recess

2:50 - 3:15 Word Work

Cultural Dinner-Friday, October 2nd

A flyer went home on Friday about Long's First Cultural Dinner. If you're planning to attend, please fill out the back side of the flyer and return it to school. It should be a fun evening to taste food from different cultures and visit with families.

Problem Solving Fun

The students used some "critters" and storyboards to model addition and subtraction word problems. Then they wrote the number sentences on their dry erase boards. We talked about words problems that involve "putting together" is addition. Word problems that begin with one group and the group is being taken apart that's subtraction.

Tiny Topic Notebooks

The students love their new tiny topic notebooks. They're used to write down ideas for their future writing. The students have started writing a personal narrative during our writing time. I love this writing unit as I get to know more about my students. 

Social Studies Review

We reviewed in class today with our textbooks and our Activotes. The students have learned a lot about communities! I sent home the textbooks so your child can review at home. The test is on Friday, September 11th. 

Urban and Rural

In Social Studies, we've been learning about different communities. We've talked about neighborhoods make up different communities. After learning about urban, rural, and suburban communities, the students made a Venn diagram to compare urban and rural communities. Check out some of their work!