This week is going to be a very exciting one in room 11.  Monday begins our adventure in hedgehog care!  Sophie was picked up this weekend and is all ready to come in and visit Monday morning.  We are going on our field trip to Drumthwacket, the governor’s residence, next Wednesday.  Please remember to turn in permission slips ASAP!  Below are our learning goals for this week:

Reading: This week we will be focusing on comparing and contrasting different view points as well as topics.  Comparing is telling how 2 things are similar.  Contrasting is telling how they are different.  We will be using a variety of different materials for these lessons including texts and physical objects.

Also during reading centers, I will be finishing up our Fountas and Pinnell Benchmarking.  We do this 3 times a year to check your child’s reading level.  It consists of students reading aloud to me (so I can hear where they are making errors), reading quietly to themselves, and then discussing the information or story they read (so I can check for comprehension.  Once everyone is done, I will be sending home a detailed graph of your child’s progress for this year (or the last 2 years for my friends that looped with me) as well as an explanation of what their level means and how you can help me help them at home.

Grammar: We will be picking up where we left off before break this week and reviewing adjectives and adverbs this week as well as working with prepositions that tell where.  There will be an edmodo quiz on Friday.

Vocabulary: This week our words all begin with the prefixes dis-, fore-, sub-, and under-.  We will be working to both understand what these prefixes mean as well as how they change the definition of the root word.  Check out our Powerful Vocabulary page for a list of the words as well as their definitions.  Our test on Friday focuses on using the words in context, not spelling.

Writing: We will be working on editing and publishing our second portfolio piece this week.  Last week we worked on writing a rough draft of a story about a wish a genie granted us that had to benefit someone other than ourselves.  This week we will peer edit, discuss rough draft score with me, and begin the revising/typing process.

Math: We are working with 2 by 2 multiplication this week.  We will begin using tables and charts to help us organize our work, but by the end of the week the work your child will be doing will look very familiar!

Social Studies: Students will be learning about the history of Drumthwacket this week leading up to our trip next week.  We will be creating time-lines, dissecting the state seal, creating calling cards, and learning about what our governor does each day.

Science: This week we will be working on tweaking our hedgehog habitat as needed and monitoring her health and behavior.  Each day a different students will be reporting in our our blog page about Sophie and what she has been up to that day.  Check out our Hedgie Home Page Link!