The past couple weeks have been very full in room 13. I wanted to highlight some things we have been working on since Thanksgiving break. We have wrapped up our introductory multiplication unit and have moved on to three digit addition and subtraction. We began the unit focusing on rounding and how we can make estimations to determine how reasonable our answers are. We are working on making sure to double check our answers make sense before moving on to the next problem. In reading we have been working on understanding how to use context clues to find the meaning to a word we do not know. It doesn’t make sense for readers to skip unknown words and never try to determine a meaning because the purpose of reading is to understand. A reader can help themselves try to understand tricky words by reading the sentences around the word. Sometimes the author puts the definition before or after the word is used, sometimes they use a synonym or antonym next to the unknown word. We took a deeper look at making inferences. We learned that authors don’t always tell us everything about a character or a situation, so we have to make inferences to understand the text more deeply. I was amazed by how students used their background knowledge and the text to figure out deeper meanings. Here is an article of little activities you could do with your student to deepen their skill: http://www.readingrockets.org/article/making-inferences-and-drawing-conclusions. In writing we have been working on creating mystery stories. Ask your child what elements a story needs to make it entertaining to readers. They have grown in their ability to show what is happening rather than tell, and I am excited to work with them to complete the editing process this upcoming week! On Thursday we had the privilege of talking to David Kelly, author of the Baseball Mysteries Series. It was fun to see how a real author uses a very similar outline to what we use in the classroom to write his stories. The students were fascinated when he showed a picture of his book after his editor had written all over it. Being able to see that a real author has to fix their writing before it gets published boosted their confidence. Upcoming Dates: December 24- January 1 Winter Break January 4- Permission Slip due for trip to Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center January 8- Field Trip to Spruce Peak Performing Arts Center We have had a word of the week every week. This previous week's word was considerate. We talked about what it means to be considerate. We practiced "stepping into someone else's shoes" to think about how they feel before we say or do something. This picture comes from our Friday morning activity of creating compliment cards. Students went around to every seat and wrote a compliment to each of their classmates. Your student should have brought home this blue paper on Friday!
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December 2018
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