Week in Review, September 4-8, 2023

For more weekly pictures, click here. 

In Writing, we learned a few ways we can bring our stories to life. We learned that we can make our characters move, talk, and think. 

We also learned that we can tell small steps to bring our stories to life. A lot of students are still giving big watermelon stories. This is a difficult concept to understand and by focusing on the small steps students will be able to better zoom in. You can practice telling the small steps when you work on a task together at home (brushing teeth, eating a meal, riding a bike, making cookies, playing a game, etc.).

In Reading, we continued to build our reading stamina and good reading habits. This week we learned how to:

• Reread to smooth out our voice.
• Readers track and scoop up words with our eyes.
• Reread to see more.
• How to drop our bad habits (the freeze, the blooper, the mumble, etc.) and pick up some good habits (we will be learning these over the next couple of weeks). 

Reading homework started this week. Please continue to read with your child Monday-Thursday evenings. You can read passages from in the notebook that came home 

In Word Study, we reviewed all the short vowels. Please do the home review/practice with your child this next week at home.

We also learned all about nouns. We worked to identify nouns and completed a SeeSaw post categorizing nouns. To see your child's post, please read the SeeSaw letter that came home in your child's zippy Thursday. 

In Math, we started Unit 2, Addition and Subtraction Story Problems. Please read the parent letter here. This week we learned how to write an equation with an unknown (box around the answer). We learned three different types of story problems: Add To, Change Unknown, and Take From. Please see the examples below. 

You can ask your child to solve the following story problems, for extra practice, using all of these steps: Write an equation with the unknown, make a model with labels, and write a seperate answer with the unknown box around it. See the charts above for help. 

Add To: 5 kids were listening to a story. 4 more kids joined the group. How many kids are listening to the story now?

Change Unknown: Jenny had 3 stickers. Frank gave her some more stickers. Now she has 10 stickers. How many stickers did Frank give her?

Take From: A baker had 8 cookies. He sold 4 of the cookies. How many cookies does he have now? 

In Social Studies, we had two safety drills this week. One was planned and the other was not. Students did a wonderful job on both! We also do a STEAM lesson, in our classroom, as part of the study of our names. We learned about sensors and then used some Ozobots to see how sensors work. The ozobots followed the lines in our names. We saw that the Ozobots like dark, thick lines. They can also see color. Later we will see some of the ways we can make our Ozobots move with color codes. We also did a See, Think, Wonder on what makes a community. We discovered that a community is a group of people (or animals), working together, to achieve a common goal. Next week we will start learning about our SAS Core Values and the importance of having values in a community. 

Upcoming Events:

*Parents and caregivers who pick up students at the end of the day are asked to exit the campus once they have reunited. We do not have supervision on the playground after school. 

• September 11-No School! Faculty Inservice Day!
• September 13-Free Dress Day!
• September 21-Mrs. Wood's Birthday! Mrs. Wood will be sharing a treat during our PM snack today.
• September 25-Late Start (10:00).
• September 27-Free Dress Day!
• September 29-
• Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration from 2:00-3:00. We need 4-5 parent volunteers. Please let our Room Parents know if you can help.
• Friday Night Lights-Come enjoy some BBQ and High School sporting events, from 3:30-7:30, at the HS fields/gym. You can get your coupons here after Sept. 14th.
• October 11-13-Fall Conferences!
• October 14-22-Fall Break. Drop 4-5 pictures from your holiday here. Your child will share these pictures to practice public speaking and to work on identifying the when, where, who, what & how (what we are working on during writing). 
• October 23-Late Start (10:00)