Oct. 20 to Oct. 24

I hope that everyone had a great weekend enjoying the sunny weather!  Here are our plans for the week:

Reading - This is our last week of Unit 1 : Changes.  The week will focus on comprehension skills that we have been practicing, such as making T-Charts to document finding text evidence (words or pictures) that answers the question "How do things change?", make inferences in order to understand what the author means, draw conclusions to make a decision about the reading, and compare and contrast ideas from the two different readings "Changing  as .

Vocabulary - The students will complete activities that review and practice the words from Unit 1 : Changes (choose, responsibility, decision, prepare, confused, skill, familiar).

Writing - The students will be finishing their writing project about a change they would like to make in their lives.  They will be working on a rough draft, editing, and writing a final copy.

Spelling - The list of words this week include short and long vowels.  Each night through Thursday, the students will be assigned homework to complete at home to help them practice their words.  If you are unsure of what the homework is, you can check your child's planner.  It will be located in the "Spelling" section, and the students will have circled the assignment.  We write it in the style "WS #", which corresponds with "Worksheet and page number".

Math - We will be introducing multiplication to the students this week.  We will start with a pre-assessment on Monday to determine what students already understand about multiplication, and then we will reassign the students for Math groups.  In order to introduce multiplication, we will focus on the understanding that, in order to determine the total amount,  we will be looking at a specific number of groups with the same amount, as opposed to counting one-by-one.  We will be completing many activities that further the students' understandings of groups vs. individual amounts, and they will learn that 5 x 8 means 5 "groups of" 8. The vocabulary words they will use are factors (the numbers that are multiplied together) and product (result of multiplying the factors).

Field Trip - As you are very familiar with, we will be attending Alberta Bair's production of Schoolhouse Rock Live on Monday.  The bus will leave Sandstone at 11:50, and the musical begins at 12:30.  I expect that the students will be prepared for a wonderful production.   I also expect that will behave respectfully and appropriately when in the community.