We had and AMAZING first week!  I loved getting to know all of my new students.  Nothing is more scary, for students and teachers, than the first day.  So many unknown elements await us as we walk through those doors!  I must say this may have been my favorite first week so far!  As promised in last week’s blog post, I will post our learning goals and resources to assist both students and families in better understanding them each week.  I am equally excited to meet all of families of my students this Tuesday night, September 11th from 7-8 at Back to School Night.

Writing:  This week students will be working on identifying the key elements of a fictional narrative and using them to author their first graded writing piece of the year.  Take a peek at the short video below to review the required elements of characters, plot, and resolution.

Reading:  We will also be working on story elements in our whole group story this week, “A Package from Ms. Jewls.”  Students will be learning about characters, setting, and plot.  We will also be completing our beginning of the year STAR testing for both Math and Reading during our reading time.  Students will be bench-marked using the Fountas and Pinnell system during guided reading.  This will allow me to better adjust my teachings to meet all students’ needs.

Math:  In math this week, we will be working to calculate the area of rectangles.

Spelling and Grammar:  Please click on the spelling words link on the  side to have access to this week’s words.  In grammar, we are working on identifying subjects and predicates to help us determine if sentences are complete or fragments.

Social Studies:  We will begin our first unit of study exploring the adaptations Native Americans used to survive in their environments.  We will begin with the Woodland tribes and move into the Plains tribes this week.  I apologize, but I could not find a video resource for this!