Week 16

Reminders and News:

·         The Iowa test will continue this Monday through Wednesday. Please make sure your child is here on time and has eaten breakfast before coming into the classroom.

·         Our holiday party will be on December 19^th from 1:30-2:30. This is a party for the students. Please let me know if your child will not be here that afternoon. We will be having a book exchange during the party. Please bring a new book wrapped the morning of the party.

·         Tortuga needs a home for the Winter break. If your family will be in town and you would like to host Tortuga, please e-mail me. You can split the time with another family as well if that works and you all can arrange transportation. He is really easy and quiet, I promise!

·         Please have your child read/sing the poems in the poetry folder and return the folder on Monday. If there are papers in the pockets, please put them into the brads. Thanks!  

Here is a peak at what we will be focusing on this week:

Language Arts

We will read The Gingerbread Man and discuss the literacy characteristics:

·         Characters

·         Setting

·         Title

·         Repeated phrase

·         Beginning, Middle, End

After reading The Gingerbread Man, we will read other Gingerbread books such as The Gingerbread Baby”, The Gingerbread Girl. And compare the characteristics of the stories.

The word family we will be focusing on this week is the –ose family. Students will understand that the o is long because the e at the end of the word. The song we are singing is called “Watering a Rose”. We will make a list of –ose family words and sort words by long o and short o.

Writing

·         Students will write interactive thank you letters to job presenters. We are learning that a letter is composed of a greeting, body, and closing.

·         Students will write about real world possibilities.

Math

·         The students will be introduced to a game that provides practice with teen numbers and builds number sense.  What is a teen frame and how is it like the ten frame?

·         The students will develop addition and subtraction strategies using a walk-on number line. What is a number line? What numbers would we see or not see on a 0-20 number line? 

·         The students will be introduced to a game that reinforces number recognition and number comparisons. How can we compare two numbers? (Bigger, smaller, larger, greater, less

·         The students will be introduce to the pattern-block template.  What is a pattern-block template and how is it used? What are the names of the shapes on the template?

Science:

·         What are the needs and characteristics of animals? Why are these characteristics important?

o   Why do ducks have feathers? Why do ducks not get wet?  Students will understand why ducks have feathers as their outer coverings.

o   How can we group animals by their coverings? Students will categorize animals by their outer coverings. Students will view a real snake skin and fox skin.

 Social Studies:

What are wants and needs? What are some of your wants? Are these needs?

·         What is a good? What is a service? Students will understand what services and goods are. Services – jobs that people do to help others satisfy their wants and needs.

·         Students will understand how basic human needs can be met such as through self-producing, purchasing, and trading.

IB- How We Organize Ourselves

·         We will listen to our parent presenters discuss their jobs and discuss:

o   The job title

o   Building the job is in

o   Tools or technology used to perform the job

o   Uniform

o   How the job helps the community.