October 2nd Update

Wow! It’s already October! The first month have school has been a lot of fun for us as we have had an opportunity to get to know each other and build a learning community within our classroom.

We will be learning a lot of new skills this month! In Number Corner, we will be continuing to build on the concept of grouping and regrouping. We will also be learning how to convert from cups to quarts to gallons. Our Number Line continues the theme of grouping and regrouping as we learn about multiples of 4. We will also be building strategies for problem solving and basic multiplication facts.

Our water unit is continuing with an investigation about hot water and cold water. On the first day of this investigation, we built a thermometer with a glass bottle and a straw! It was very fun to actually see how water expands as it warms and contracts as it cools. We will also be observing density of water and comparing two states of water: solid and liquid.

We have also started a Storypath unit in Social Studies called Early Northwest Coast People. Storypath was developed on the belief that students learn best when they are active in their own learning. In this unit, students create a story about a village of people who lived a long time ago on the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America. Our class has been building a “frieze,” which is the setting for our story. To prepare for our frieze, we looked at pictures from the Pacific Northwest Coast and viewed a segment of the PBS special, Over Washington. As a cooperative experience, students discussed what elements to include in our frieze and construction began on Friday. In the next episode of Storypath, we will discuss how the people who lived in the Northwest Coast met basic needs through the resources available to them in the natural environment.

In Reading Street, we are continuing to apply the reading comprehension skills of understanding author’s purpose and sequence. Our vocabulary skills include understanding word parts and learning how to use context clues to understand an unknown word.

Here are a few suggestions for how you can support this learning at home:

• Ask your student to tell you what they think the author’s purpose is for a book or newspaper article.



• As you are looking at products that use water in the preparation (such as rice, soup, or hot chocolate), discuss the amount of water needed. How much water would you need if you doubled the servings? Halved the serving?



• Flashcards are a super way to help you student develop computational fluency. They can be made using index cards or card stock.
  
  Thank you supporting your child’s learning!