Blooming with Knowledge!
Important Dates:
- 4/25 Botanical Gardens Field Trip
- 4/25 Reading Text Feature Homework goes home (due the next day)
- 4/26 Unit 5 Math Test
- 4/28 School Carnival
- 5/2 Subject Homework Goes Home (to be determined, due the next day)
- 5/3 Class Picture Retakes
- 5/17 FIELD DAY
- 5/18 PBL Presentations
What We're Learning:
Reading: Non-Fiction Text Features
Read nonfiction books at home and have your child point out the various text features, such as: diagrams, captions, maps, graphs, etc. Talk about how these can teach the reader more. We will be reading a ton about life cycles in order to care for all of the living creatures in our room properly.
Grammar: Compound Sentences
We will be learning how to correctly combine 2 sentences using a comma and a conjunction to make a compound sentence. Please practice this at home, as it is a tricky skill. Students struggle to make sure BOTH sentences can stand alone to be a compound sentence. For example:
COMPOUND: I love ice-cream, and I love brownies!
NOT COMPOUND: I love ice-cream, and brownies!
Writing: Continuing Opinion
Students will write about their opinions and must learn how to support their opinion with multiple strong reasons. For example: My opinion is that playing outside is better than playing inside. A strong reason to go with that is that it helps keep you healthy by being active outside. A weak reason would be that "it is fun". (this would not be an acceptable reason)
We're now using persuasive letters to recommend a book! Students are writing about their opinions of nonfiction books, and writing letters to recommend these books to other readers. Again, reading nonfiction books at home will aide in this process!
They will also start recommending fiction books toward mid-week.
- This is kind of like that last 10 minutes of every Reading Rainbow episode, where kids talk about their favorite books and WHY they love them. "You Tube" some of those for a little bit of insight!
Science: Life Cycles- PBL PROJECTS!
Hopefully by now you have heard all about Farmer Black and her request for help. Students will need to become experts on life cycles and caring for living organisms in order to help educate Farmer Black's customers! To help us learn more, we have plants, ladybugs, and butterflies in the classroom currently. We are still waiting on our eggs, and once they arrive we'll need to take care of them (and the eventual chicks)! This is our 2nd PBL Project of the year- you may remember the first had to do with Native Creek and Cherokee People of Georgia. We have a tentative date of May 18 scheduled for the presentations. Mark your calendars!
Also be on the lookout for a Chick Handling Permission Slip- you must sign one for your child to be allowed to interact with and hold our little chickies!
Math: Unit 5 Assessment & Begin Unit 6
We will test on Thursday the 26th, and the next week we will begin Unit 6. A parent letter will go home on Monday- please hold onto it! The next unit will be all about arrays, which students have started to learn about in this unit through their partitioning practice. They will learn about repeated addition sentences that match the arrays, and how to tell if a number is even or odd.
Thank you for all that you do!
Mrs. Crisp
