Weekly Update

What a busy week!  We kicked off the week with our field trip to Babler State Park!  I had a lot of pictures, so I wanted to post them in their own post last night.  This week was also Red Ribbon Week!  Mrs. Maddock came in to talk to us about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.  Furthermore, we learned that we even have to be careful with coffee and energy drinks that have large amounts of caffeine and sugar.  On Friday, we met with our buddies and made Pumpkin Glyphs!  They are hanging in the hallway with other pieces that you can check out during Parent-Teacher Conferences next week!  

Also in the Halloween spirit, this week we got to work on our Halloween packets for morning work instead of a daily edit or math sheet.  

Math
This week in Math, we have learned how to find the mean, median, mode, and range in a set of numbers.  Ask your student the trick that they use to remember the difference between these four terms.  We have learned many different tricks.  Also, this week we learned how to make a line plot.  We even got to challenge ourselves with basic fractions, as one data set used halves and fourths!  

This week in our Activity rotation, we created a meal plan for a family of four for 5 whole days!  We worked with grocery ads and a budget of $50.

For second quarter in the Technology rotation, we are focusing on a program called StudyIsland.  Last quarter, we practiced our facts on XtraMath. 

Reading

We continued our fiction unit with discussions of story elements.  In reading groups, we are looking at the October Scholastic Storyworks magazine.  Additionally, we have started our new read aloud, Missing on Superstition Mountain!

Writing/Spelling 

We are almost done revising our realistic fiction stories to prepare for editing!  In Spelling, I have decided that all students will work on homophones.  In reviewing students' writing, I could tell that these are tricky for us!  However, students are doing great with our first study of homophones!  Students received their first set of homophones this week.  Their Spelling test will be next Thursday.  We are having fun learning about homophones!  Check out some of the activities we participated in below.  

Sorting words by homophones

We created pictures and symbols to help us in remembering the correct uses of homophones. 

Science/Social Studies

We learned a lot on our field trip on Monday!  Then, we continued our study of Missouri in Chapter 2 of our Social Studies textbook.  We are currently learning about different cultures that can be found in Missouri.  We also read about many different festivals that celebrate these cultures.  

Other Important Info.

You should have received report cards this week.  Please let me know if you did not receive an email with your child's report card.  I look forward to meeting with you on Monday or Wednesday of next week for Parent-Teacher Conferences.  Our Halloween Party will be next week on Thursday.  The costume parade begins at 1:30 and the parties start at 2:00.  No violent or inappropriate costumes are allowed.  Remember that we do not have school next Friday, after Halloween.  Lastly, the Scholastic Book Fair is up and running.  Check it out!  We are collecting change for the "All for Books" program.  All students took home a baggie with a note attached to collect any loose change or $1 bills.