October 29th - November 2nd

Happy Friday! We all survived the two days after Halloween. 😜 Surprisingly, yesterday and today have been great in our classroom which I did not expect to happen.  We had a busy but fun week with celebrating Halloween, beginning a new math cluster, learning about Wilma Rudolph, and completing week two of word sorts!

Laurel Nursing Home Dates 10:30-11:30 AM: Below are the four dates that we will go to the Laurel's Nursing Home if you want to put them on your calendar.  Parents are welcome to join us!  You may ride the bus or meet us there.  We load the bus at CSD at 10:00 AM and the program is from 10:30-11:30 AM and we return to CSD by 12:00 PM.  

• Tuesday, November 13th
• Tuesday, January 8th
• Tuesday, March 12th
• Tuesday, May 7th

November 12th Hurricane Make Up Day and Veteran's Day Celebration 

November 14th Charlotte Children's Theater Field Trip: Please have your child to school by 8:00 am on this day.  The bus will leaving CSD at 8:30 am sharp.  We will eat lunch when we return to school so send a normal lunch.  We will not have time for a morning snack so please feed your child a big breakfast to keep them full until lunch.

Math:

We officially began Cluster 3 this week which is all about "place value."  As students work with two-digit numbers, they learn that the digits represent amounts of tens and ones.  Then they use that knowledge to compare numbers to see which are less than, equal to, or greater than other numbers.  In this cluster, students will learn to count up from any given start number within 150. Students will learn to group objects by tens and left-overs as an efficient way to count larger groups of objects.  They will write down the number of groups of tens and ones as well as the total number of objects.  A variety of objects will be used for counting but we will mainly use unifix cubes.  Students will also learn to count items in a picture by circling groups of tens to help find the total.  This understanding of place value is foundational as students build fluency with addition and subtraction. 

Literacy:

Students did awesome on our second week of word sorts!  They have actually learned to love them and find them fun and challenging. 😊  Before the students are sent to Daily 5, I teach a mini-lesson that involves a reading strategy.  This week we focused on the idea of "Juggling All Three Balls."  Reader's don't only do one thing when we get to a word. We need to do at least three: (1) think about what makes sense; (2) think about how a book sounds; and (3) think about what looks right.  This is a great thing to encourage your child to do while reading at home!

Thematic:

We continued learning about Wilma Rudolph this week as we begin our American Heroes and Famous Athletes unit. Next week, we will move onto Jackie Robinson.  The other athletes we will learn about are Mia Hamm, Michael Jordan, and Michelle Kwan.  We learned about Venn diagrams and how to use them to compare and contrast things or people.  Students created a Venn diagram comparing themselves to Wilma Rudolph.  Students thought about ways they are different than Wilma and the same as Wilma.  Students also got to complete an obstacle course that I created that involved sprinting, jumping sides, and side shuffling.  They got to run the course three times to see if they could improve their time.  They loved this activity! 

Have a great weekend!

Love,

Mrs. James