Monday, February 4, 2013

Please discuss with your child appropriate classroom behavior.


We will be exchanging Valentine’s Day cards! No food!


Science

Our current science unit is focusing on the states of matter, solid, liquid, and gas.  The students will examine the properties of each state.  In the end, the students will be given a foreign substance to investigate. They will determine what state of matter it is based on the substance’s properties. 


Social Studies

Our next second step unit will focus on identifying and controlling individual feelings.  We will also be reading about some famous African Americans throughout the month. Each child will be completing a bio study on a famous African American. They have done an amazing job with our MLK Jr. unit! Ask them about some of the vocabulary they have been learning about: segregation, freedom, and prejudice.
 

Reading
This month we will continue to read a variety of non-fiction and fiction books on Solids and Liquids, owls, biographies, and will begin our unit on fairytales and folktales. We also will be reading some poetry books.  Book Clubs will also be continued! What a great success, they are loving the books! Love to see them so excited about characters they are reading about. I love fairytale unit because they get to compare the folktales, fairytales, etc. from different cultures!! This unit also lends itself nicely to our voice writing trait that we will be starting this month.



                                                         Writing

This month the students’ will be continuing to focus on recognizing an author’s voice, as well as, using voice in their own writing.  Students will analyze how words can affect their feelings/emotions towards the characters in stories and towards the reader of the story.  Students should have correct punctuation and capitals in every sentence.

  We will also continue our grammar studies, and will take a look at prepositions, and sentence structure.
Reading
Students will be making inferences and providing support from the words in the text.  At the end of the month, the reading time for homework will also be increased to 25 min. every night.
We will begin cursive this month as well.

Math
We will be starting unit3.1 this week which will focus on 2D and 3D shapes. This begins our geometry unit. We will continue to work on solving complex addition and subtraction problems, with a focus on coding and solving word problems. PLEASE PRACTICE THOSE MATH FACTS UP TO 100!!! NO MORE FINGERS!! USE FLASHCARDS!!!