Week of August 17-21, 2015

Welcome to the second week of school! I had a wonderful weekend, and got to participate in the MS Muck Run. We got to raise money for a great cause with my family, and have a lot of fun getting really muddy!
muck

I am so excited about all of our learning this week! I wanted to remind everyone that Wednesday will be our first early dismissal at 2:50 in order for teachers to attend professional development. Here is a summary of what we are going to learn in room 16:

ELA: This week we will focus on the -aunch sound pattern and the suffixes -ant and -ent during word work time. We are doing spelling tests different this school year. Every week we will focus on a sound pattern plus a prefix/suffix. Every two weeks we will give a spelling test, but the spelling test will not be from a set of pre-chosen words. The students will be given the spelling pattern and/or prefix/suffix and will write 3 words that fit that sound pattern or prefix/suffix. This allows students to choose their own spelling words, and with practice in the classroom learning the new sound patterns and suffixes/prefixes, there is no need to memorize a list- the students should easily be able to come up with examples for each on their own. This lets us know that they understand the sound pattern and the prefix/suffix.

We will also be focusing on making inferences in the stories we are reading. This is when students use prior knowledge and book clues to come to a conclusion that is not directly stated in the story. If you want to practice at home try the following websites:

Quia Inference Practice

The Detective’s Notebook Game

Science:
In science, we will continue learning about observing and measuring matter. We will focus on the Law of Conservation of Mass (when you break an object apart, the sum of all the parts equals the whole object) and Density this week, plus thinking about describing matter with our five senses like last week. For some online practice try the following websites:

Describing
Matter Game

Density – sink or float game

Please let me know if you have any questions, and feel free to leave comments!

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