Week 4: September 25 - September 29

This year has already flown by - I can't believe it's already our fourth week together! I am so glad it is finally Fall - our third floor room gets HOT, fast!

Now that this site is ready, I'll start posting our weekly plans.

Of course, everyone knows what God thinks of our plans.... especially the plans of a first year teacher! Let's rephrase this: These weekly posts will have our classroom GOALS.

For any classroom photos, assignments, or those Youtube videos I keep showing the kids, check around the site. This is just for an overview!

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Math:

This will be our final week of our immersive review. Of course, we have daily morning work from the Simple Solutions workbook, but we are almost ready to get started on some challenging new concepts!

This week, we will build a dodecahedron of fractions! Moving on from reviewing solving basic equations, we will jog our memories with 12 sides of fraction fun.

Language Arts:

Our Essay of the Week about our life-changing discovery is due! We will have independent reading time and Trouble Don't Last reading as a class. As we get closer to finishing Trouble Don't Last, we are looking forward to a potential author visit! Also expect some reading and writing activities with our new Social Studies unit!

Spelling lists and a new spelling practice activity will be coming home... Stop and Smell the Spelling, too. Spelling tests on Friday, as always!

Science:

We spent some time outside last week for a scavenger hunt as a fun, real-life review of Science from last year! We will be reviewing our work and preparing for a new unit, the Planets! (More on this next week).

Social Studies:

Introducing A New Integrated Unit: Pre-Columbian and American Indian Civilizations!

We will start with a discussion using a KWL chart. This gets students thinking about what they already Know, what they Want to know. There are so many misconceptions and generalizations about Native Americans and their interactions with European explorers (think: Pocahontas, Thanksgiving traditions). When we finish this unit, we will revisit this chart to see if they answered their own questions - what they Learned. There is so much to learn about Native American cultures and histories!

This Social Studies unit will be heavily integrated with Language Arts. I will incorporate plenty of primary sources. I really want to focus on learning about American history through various perspectives. This will help students to understand what it's like to be a historian - analyzing photos, artifacts, documents; asking questions; making connections; understanding the purpose of why these resources were created and for whom they were created.

To start this week, we will learn about the complex civilizations of the Incas, Mayans, Aztecs, and Mississippians.

Events this Week

There will be a new seating chart, new classroom jobs, and new bathroom break policy introduced on Monday.

Wednesday is the Feast of St. Vincent de Paul! Our class will spend the morning learning about St. Vincent with the 3rd and 4th grade classes!

Thursday (most likely - if technology goes our way) will be the first MAP test of the year. This test is designed to measure student growth throughout the year! We will take it again in the Winter and then in the Spring.

You can click on this link for more information about MAP testing: https://www.nwea.org/map-growth/

Can't wait for another great week!

Love,

Ms. Sigsworth