Weekly Update

Math 

We have finished with elapsed time, although some students still may need to work on this at home.  We are now in Chapter 6 and are talking about collecting and organizing data.  We discussed that the first step in collecting data is to take a survey.  We asked our classmates a survey question and then went around the room making a tally mark on our choice of answers in each student's survey.  For example, Mrs. Leighton asked, "What is your favorite ice cream flavor?"  The survey choices were vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, cookie dough, and other.  Now, all students have a survey in which they can use the data to make charts and graphs!  In Chapter 6, we will also be learning about mean, median, mode, and range.  Take a look at our tally tables for our surveys below!

Reading

We continued our fiction unit with discussions of story elements.  In reading groups, we are looking at the October Scholastic Storyworks magazine!  Our plan is to start our new read aloud, another Mark Twain Nominee, this week!  It is called Missing on Superstition Mountain.  

Writing/Spelling 

We are continuing to work on revising our story scenes in our realistic fiction stories.   This past week we focused on adding dialogue to our stories.  We reviewed the many ways to spice up our writing with the "Ba-Da-Bing" revision strategy.  Below is our anchor chart for this strategy, but ask your student what this means to him or her in their writing!  We thought we'd have time to receive a new sort in Spelling this past week, but it ended up being pushed to this week.

Science/Social Studies

We have finished our Ecosystems unit this past week with a study of fossils.  We will move on to Social Studies this week.  Chapter 2 will continue our yearlong study of Missouri.  

Other Important Info.

If you have not yet signed up for Parent-Teacher Conferences, please do so.  Monday, October 28th has one time slot open.  Otherwise, there are some time slot choices for Wednesday, October 30th.  Again, report cards will be mailed out later this week.  Don't forget that our first field trip is tomorrow!  We will visit Babler State Park for Missouri Heritage Days!  We leave first thing in the morning.  Students should bring a sack lunch and wear comfortable tennis shoes.  I also highly recommend that students wear a jacket, as it can be especially cool in the shade!  I am looking forward to tomorrow!  Finally, Red Ribbon Week starts tomorrow with crazy sock day!