October 12th - October 16th

We finally experience some slightly cooler weather last week. We'll take what we can get! This put us in a fall mood! 

Last week we covered author's purpose... Writers write to persuade, inform, and entertain. Students enjoyed learning about the three purposes. Each day they had to look through their book bags and find a book that ft the purpose we covered that day. They had to write the title on a sticky note and then write two reasons why they knew what the author's purpose was and then present their book to the class. In centers this week I will give them different types of texts and they will have to identify the author's purpose. 

We also covered proper nouns. This is always very fun for the kids. In centers this week they will have to write a story about a pumpkin and include 5 proper nouns (and two contractions). Last week they showed me they could identify proper nouns and change common nouns to proper nouns. This week they will take it one step further and will have to apply proper nouns in their writing.  

Finally, we covered contractions. This is always a tough phonics skill, but they did a great job. On Thursday, we played a  game to review for our spelling test. I made sets of notecards- one notecard had the contraction, the other notecard had the two words that formed the contraction. I passed them out and they had to find their partner. We played several rounds, and they loved it!

This week in ELA:

Phonics: r-Controlled vowels -er, -ir, -ur

Spelling words:

1. person

2. nurse

3. dirt

4. turn

5. birth

6. serve

7. curb

8. curl

9. skirt

10. purse

11. turtle

12. her

 

Sight words: ago, enough, whole, word, above, toward

 

Conventions Skill: Singular and Plural Nouns *Identify the difference between singular and plural nouns and add -s to change a noun from singular to plural. Also, we will learn that words ending in -x, -s, -ss, -ch, -sh need to have an -es added to the end!

 

Comprehension Skill: Nonfiction Text Features and Facts and Details

 

I am so excited about our nonfiction text features unit that we will start tomorrow! We will spend the next two weeks studying the features of nonfiction text (headings, captions, illustrations, index, glossary, bold print, etc.). It is important for students to be able to use various text features to locate key facts and information in a text quickly and efficiently. We will go on a "road trip" through nonfiction text features. Each day we will cover a different feature. After the 2 week unit, students will create a nonfiction text feature project on the iPads to show their understanding.

We will read a lot of nonfiction texts over the next two weeks. This week we will focus on bats. 

Religion:

We will take our chapter 9 test on God's Laws (The 10 Commandments). We will start Chapter 10, all about Reconciliation. We will also make our first round of Cannon Ballling Cancer cards for Halloween.