Normally, I would send home a monthly newsletter to my class that tells parent’s the skills that we are focusing on each month. However, due to switching kids, a normal newsletter will not be very beneficial. For this reason, I wanted to update my blog to let parent’s know what our class is learning about in each subject area. Please remember that if your child has a different teacher for language arts or math they may not be learning exactly the same skills right now.

Language Arts: During the month of September, our big question has been: “What can we learn from exploring new places and things?” We have been working on identifying and analyzing characters and setting as well as focusing on main idea and details. During writing, students are learning about the important components of a personal narrative. We are working on making sure to write in complete sentences.

During the month of October, we will be wrapping up our exploration unit and moving onto our working together unit. We will continue to work on main idea and details as well as story structure. We will also work on summarizing and identifying cause and effect. We will continue to practice writing personal narratives. This month we will work on remaining focused throughout our writing. We will continue to go through all of the steps on the writing process, including revising and editing our writing.

I try to incorporate quick games we can play together on the Eno board that reinforce the skills we are working on. The students loved the game we used today to practice synonyms and asked me to post a link. The website is  http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/magickey/adventures/code_gamefs.shtml.

Math: In math class we will continue to practice double digit addition and subtraction without regrouping. We are also working on word problems. The students have a working knowledge of word problems but still have difficulty determining what kind of word problem they are working on.
The types of word problems that we are working on are:
–Add To– one amount is added to another. Ex- I have 35 cookies. I make 24 more. How many cookies do I have now?
–Take From– one amount is taken from another. Ex- I had 58 cookies. I gave 43 cookies away. How many cookies do I have now?
–Put Together-two (or more) amounts are put together. Ex- I bought 30 cookies. My friend bought 26 cookies. How many cookies did we both buy?
–Take Apart– the total amount is taken apart. Ex- There are 97 cookies. 53 are chocolate chip cookies. How many are not chocolate chip cookies?
–Compare– two amounts are compared. Ex- I have 55 cookies. My friend has 23 cookies. How many more cookies do I have?

Social Studies– During the month of September, we have been talking about Civics. So far, we have discussed ways to be a good citizen, why we need rules and laws and the government. We have started talking about symbols. Once we finish discussing symbols, we will review our civics unit and then have our civics test. I will give you at least 1 weeks notice of our test date.