Week of April 18th: This week we learned about fossils. Our story was about a girl and her dog who loved to dig for fossils. We learned about adverbs and reviewed synonyms. Next week is lesson 28.
Week of April 11th: We enjoyed reading and discussing our main story The Mysterious Tadpole. Students practiced writing a summary for their writing prompt. Again students were able to make connections between our reading and science. Our second selection was about the life cycle of a frog. Next week is lesson 27.
Week of April 4th: Our main story this week went very well with our science learning. Students enjoyed reading How Groundhog's Garden Grew and making connections. Our second story, Super Soil was also very interesting and allowed the opportunity for more connections. During small groups we talked about fantasy books and read stories about planting. Lesson 26 next week brings our final unit of the year.
Week of March 28th: This week we reviewed cause and effect. Students are getting really good at this skill. They are also very good at our strategy visualizing. During small and large group reading we learned about fables. Students read several fables this week. We reviewed irregular verbs, antonyms, and commas.
Week of March 14th: Our story this week was about the processes of weaving a Navajo rug. The story was told from the goats point of view. We enjoyed this story! We reviewed irregular verbs and talked about prefixes. Lesson 24 will start on Monday but we will take two weeks for this lesson. We are going to spend some time doing some Easter activities next week.
Week of March 7th: Friendship was the theme of our story this week. Students wrote about a time they made a new friend. We worked on understanding characters by their thoughts, words, and actions. We discussed when to use -er and -est when comparing. Students learned about idioms.
Week of February 29th: Our main story this week was about penguins. Students enjoyed learning more about penguins. We discuss the topic, main idea, and supporting details. This is a hard concept for kids. To help them I use the visual of a funnel. The topic is the BIG idea and usually one word (top of funnel), the main idea breaks it down into more specifics (middle part of funnel as it narrows), and the details are the supporting ideas (thin part of funnel). We reviewed synonyms. Students learned about adjectives this week.
Week of February 22nd: This week we talked about heroes. Students shared their favorite pretend hero and real heroes. We discussed what makes a person a hero. Our main story was about a dog who wanted to become a hero. Ask your child about it! We reviewed prefixes and suffixes. We worked on comparing and contrasting. Students compared and contrasted the two main characters in the story. Thursday they compared and contrasted themselves to me. It was fun to read their ideas! Next week we will begin lesson 21 which is part of a new unit.
Week of February 15th: We spent time this week talking about presidents and President's Day. Students enjoyed sharing their previous president knowledge with the class. We wrote about George Washington and Abe Lincoln. Our dictionaries have the presidents in it, so we spent time looking at those. We also did some writing about our family. We will begin lesson 20 on Monday.
Week of February 8th: This week we talked about questioning. Good readers ask themselves questions before, during, and after reading. Students practiced by asking questions with our reading this week. We continued to work on using commas.
We switched our reading and daily time this week. It went well. I think the kids have enjoyed the change. Next week we will be talking about presidents. We will start lesson 20 the following week.
Week of February 1st: What makes characters interesting? That was our focus question for the week. Students were able to share their thoughts on what makes people/characters interesting. Our main reading story was about a famous writer/poet. During small groups, students read about other important writers. We also read several poems to work on reading fluency. We worked on the verb to be this week. The be verb is a bit harder, as it doesn't show an action like other verbs. Students focused more on what made sense, rather than the rules for the verb be.
Week of January 25th: We finished up lesson 17 this week. We took two weeks for this lesson due to mid year testing. We worked on the importance of sequence of events. Our second story connection was to technology. The story was taken from the internet. We discussed using the internet for gathering information and not all information found on the internet is true. :) Our stories were both related to baseball, so we had some good discussions. Several students were eager to share stories. We reviewed antonyms and synonyms. We spent some time talking about good writing and viewed some writing samples demonstrating good writing skills. We will start lesson 18 on Monday.
Week of January 11th: Students worked on story structure and inferring in large and small group reading this week. They are getting good at this! Students enjoyed our main selection about a principle selling all his ties to raise money for the new playground. We learned about pronouns and homophones this week. Our next reading lesson will be TWO weeks.
Week of January 4th: We talked a lot about compound words this week. Students enjoyed our main story called Officer Buckle and Gloria. We enjoyed talking about the characters and how they changed throughout the story. We reviewed the skill cause and effect. We picked out several examples from our story demonstrating cause and effect. We talked about abbreviations this week. During small groups this week, we worked hard on reading fluency.
Week of December 14th: What a fun story we had this week! We read and learned about Helen Keller. It took us almost an hour to read the story! We had such wonderful discussions. It was great to hear the kids thoughts, concerns, and insights to what life was like for Helen. Because they were so interested in the story, we were able to watch the Disney movie about Helen's life. We even had such awesome discussions during the video! I hope they came home and told you about the amazing life of Helen. We review proper nouns. Friday we talked about the suffix -ly. We will start lesson 15 when we return in January.
Week of December 7th: We reviewed author's purpose this week. Students shared several reasons why an author might write a story. We read a nonfiction selection about schools around the world. We had some great discussions about this text! Some students decided they would NOT want to go to school in a different country. We learned about quotation marks. Friday we talked about using a dictionary. In reading groups this week, each group read a story about schools. On Friday, kids got in small groups to read and discuss their story with each other. It was great to hear them discussing and sharing ideas with one another. Here are two groups sharing their stories.
Week of December 1st: This week we learned about the fourth kind of sentence: an exclamation sentence. We practiced the four kinds of sentences (statements, questions, commands, exclamation). Kids are really good at these! They really like the commands. :) Ask them to give you an example of each. We reviewed story structure and questioning this week. Our main story was about a girl playing music with different items around her house. Students wrote about what instrument they would like to play and why. Some of them are excited about 5th grade band! :) Friday we talked about idioms and reviewed proper nouns.
Week of November 16th: Our main story this week was Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type. A fun story with lots of humor! Kids really enjoyed it. We also enjoyed sharing several predictions we had about what happened on the farm at the end. Students are doing an excellent job with kinds of sentences. We've learned about questions, statements, and commands. They can name each type and give examples of each. Ask them about it! We will spend next week finishing up Native Americans and learning about Pilgrims. No spelling or reading lesson until after break!
Week of November 9th: We talked a lot about contractions this week. Students spent time practicing contractions in both forms. They really enjoyed our main story this week about jellyfish. We spent a lot of time reading and discussing this informational text. Students asked some good questions and we had some great discussions. We reviewed past and future tense verbs.
Week of November 2nd: We learned a lot about folktales this week. Students enjoyed our main story, How Chipmunk Got His Stripes. We talked a lot about understanding characters. Students discussed our two main characters, bear and squirrel, and their relationships and traits. We worked on when to add -s or -es to verbs. Students reviewed statements and questions.
Week of October 26th: This week we had some great discussions with our main story, Super Storms. We used the story to talk about topic, main idea, and details. In our story, storms were the topic, storms can be dangerous was our main idea. We had several details about storms being dangerous: hail, wind, lightning, blizzards. Students have a lot of prior knowledge about storms so they were eager to share. We also read some weather poems. We worked on consonant digraphs for spelling. We worked on verbs. Students read Halloween poems and a Halloween reader's theatre play during group time this week.
Week of October 19th: Our phonics focus was double consonants and ck this week. We reviewed graphic and text features. We talked a lot about drawing conclusions. I tell the kids all the time, they know how to do these skills and strategies, they just don't know the fancy names for it! :) We enjoyed our main story called The Ugly Vegetables. We wrote some thank you cards to Stewart Booster, firefighters, Joe Winters, and Scott Lujan.
Week of October 12th: This week we talked a lot about text and graphic features. For text features we specifically talked about titles, headings, and bold print. Our main graphic feature was photographs but we also discussed tables and charts. We continued to talk about plural nouns: adding s, es, and those that change names.
Week of October 5th: We talked about singular and plural nouns this week. We also talked about how to make nouns plural - adding an s, es, or changing the word completely. Our reading skill was story structure (characters, setting, and plot of story). We worked on finding the characters and setting of our stories. We talked about the plot of each story too (basically a summary, what happened in the beginning/middle/end). Story structure is a great skill to practice at home while reading! Our reading strategy was visualize. We did a visualizing activity to help us better understand this strategy. Next week we start unit 2 in reading.
Week of September 21st: We talked a lot about author's purpose this week. Students shared reasons why they thought an author wrote a story. If you are reading a story at home, please talk about author's purpose with your student. We reviewed multiple meaning words. We learned about statements and questions. Students should be able to tell you about each kind of sentence and what they need. Small groups started this week. I enjoy working with the kids in groups of four or five. I get to know a lot about them in these small group settings. Lesson 4 begins on Monday.
Week of September 14th: Lesson 3 will begin on Monday. Spelling test will be on Friday.
Week of September 7th: Our target skill for lesson 2 is compare and contrast. We had fun comparing and contrasting students. We made a venn diagram and contrasted Mrs. Six and a student. We talked about our target strategy questioning. Good readers ask questions before, during, and after reading. We reviewed subjects and predicates and I was so impressed! This is usually difficult for students but my class is doing awesome! We reviewed what makes a complete sentence. We will continue with lesson 2 next week.
Week of August 31st: We talked a lot about sequence of events. The order of a story is important to understanding it. Students reviewed the skills of inferring and predicting. The kids are really good at these they just don't always know that's what it's called. :) We talked about the short a and i sound. I try to get spelling tests returned on Friday's. I did not have time to get them checked last Friday, sorry about that.
Our next lesson will take two weeks. We start beginning of the year assessments this week and we do not want to hurry through this lesson. Please note, the spelling test will not be until the 18th.
Last week I introduced our six daily stations. Kids learned the purpose of each station and their responsibility at each. We spent a lot of time practicing each station as well. They did a nice job!
We will start lesson 1 next week. Spelling test will be on Friday.
Each week I will add a home link letter for you to view. It gives the skills, strategies, and vocabulary we will be working on for the week. It also gives activities for you to do at home. If you would like
to print it off or view it larger, just click on the document.
