Week of April 15

Upcoming Events:

JMay 1 Field Trip to Nature Center

JMay 3 Track Day at High School (leave school around 10:00)

Notes:

JLiteracy night was a fun night.  Thanks to everyone who came!

JFriday we walked to the high school for the band concert.  Students were very well behaved in the auditorium. 

JSome of our word works this week involved Scrabble Soup, Candyland with sightwords, wikki stick words, and /er/, /ir/, /ur/ sorts.

Things to Work on:

J Recycling paper, plastic, cardboard, et.

What we have been up to:

Reading: This we worked on the spelling features /ou/ and /ow/.  Our theme this week was about bugs.  This was a good review for us as we learned about insects in the fall.  Students brainstormed what they knew about insects/ bugs and worked on writing paragraphs.

Math: Our story problems this week involved three addends as well as two different operations.  This really is requiring students to read story problems carefully and think about how to solve the problem.  Each day we were able to have BUILD time.  Some of our BUILD activities involved: graphing with m&m’s, subtracting with beans and egg cartons, and math scootpad.

Science/ Social Studies: This week we started talking about our new science unit on Earth.  We started with reviewing some map features that we had talked about with our maps unit.  After reviewing map vocabulary we were able to label the continents, oceans, and lakes.

Spelling Week of April 15

1. cow
2. how
3. town
4. out
5. mouse
6. mouth
7. her
8. burn
9. gone
10. burn

Challenge
1. brown
2. town
3. mouse
4. clown
5. cloud
6. mouth
7. been
8. gone
9. other
10. verb

Week of April 8

Upcoming Events:

JApril 15 Family Literacy Night at 6:30 at West Elementary (Class with the most students who attend receives a pizza party!) 

JMay 1 Field Trip to Palo Alto County Conservation Nature Center (Students may eat a school sack lunch or bring one from home.  Please see below to order a lunch for your child from school.  Students that bring a lunch we ask that they bring items in containers instead of wrappers.  Part of the program at the Nature Center will involve weighing our trash. 

Notes:

JWe had a great time tie-dying this week.  Thanks to all the parents who sent in shirts.

Things to Work on:

J Scootpad at home with reading or math

What we have been up to:

Reading: This week in reading we are working on words with /ir/, /ur/, and /er/.  We were able to sort some words on the smartboard.  We also highlighted words with these spelling patterns in a short paper booklet.

Math: This week we worked on writing our own story problems.  We were able to make a story problem book that is in the room for students to read during read to self or read to someone.

Science/ Social Studies: We continued working on our google presentations.  Students really worked hard on these and inserted some terrific pictures.  

Week of April 8

1. her
2. bird
3. fur
4. fern
5. dirt
6. burn
7. fork
8. corn
9. from
10. beautiful

Challenge
1. germ
2. third
3. blur
4. fern
5. dirt
6. burn
7. from
8. beautiful
9. places
10. animals

Week of April 1

Upcoming Events:

J April 10 2 hr. Early Out

JApril 15 Family Literacy Night at 6:30 at West Elementary

Notes:

JThis week we had the Dome Theater come to West Elementary.  Students really enjoyed this experience.  Ask them to tell you more about it.

JWe had a great field trip to Algona and got lots of syrup from the trees.

JThis week we created self-portraits and described ourselves with awesome adjectives.  Check them out when you come for family literacy night.

Things to Work on:

J Using descriptive words in writing (adjectives, color words, number words)

What we have been up to:

Reading: This week in reading we are working on words with /or/.  Students sorted their spelling words and then were able to practice writing them in sentences.  We also played some games with /or/ on the smart board. 

Math: We have started our new unit in math.  This unit deals a lot with story problems.  We will learn what information is needed and what information is not useful.  After we took our unit 8 test I noticed that a few students could use some more assistance with adding two digit numbers.  Please continue this skill throughout the year and summer months.

Science/ Social Studies: We have started our new unit on weather.  We began the unit talking about different types of clouds and what they mean.  After talking about clouds we talked about the four seasons and made a windsock showing how the seasons change.  Towards the end of the week we worked in groups on creating Google presentations on a specific season.  Students each had an essential question to answer and create a slide to show in their season.  We will continue working on these next week and then present them to the class on our smart board.