Class Pet!

Students met their mealworms yesterday.  As we begin our Science Unit on Animal groups, they were introduced to an insect.  Students learned the six characteristics or traits that an insect has:

• 6 legs (or three pairs)
• a pair of antennae
• most have wings
• three body parts (head, thorax and abdomen)
• no backbone (invertebrate)
• lay eggs 

Check out our mealworms.  Ask your child about our observations.  They were excited to "adopt" the pet and are anxious to learn more about them! 

Science: The Six Animal Groups.

Throughout the quarter, we will be focusing on the six different animal groups: Insects, Fish, Birds, Mammals, Reptiles and Amphibians.  Students will have the opportunity to research animals of interest, ask questions, share new learning and understand their life cycles.

We are focusing on insects this week.  Students had the opportunity to learn about specific insects in the computer lab today.  They used the site below. Ask them about their new learning. 

Insect and Bug Facts

Students thoroughly enjoyed their mini research project today! They learned and shared a lot of interesting facts!

Career and Hobby Day.

Tomorrow is Career and Hobby Day.  Remind students how to be respectful for guest speakers and presenters. Students will enjoy three different sessions that they selected. 

Tomorrow is also an early dismissal at 11:30.  

SPRING BREAK CHALLENGE.

Students are encouraged to continue reading, spelling and math practice over break.  They will be bringing home additional books in their book bags to have a variety of reading material.  Students should be telling you about the books they read and be able to answer a variety of questions.  Their practice can be recorded on the SPRING BREAK CHALLENGE sheet that is coming home.  Do what you can. Total it up and send back to school on Monday, March 30.  Parents, please sign at then bottom.

Enjoy your break.  :)

Nonfiction and Wonder Files.

We will be revisiting nonfiction and addressing author's purpose, main ideas and determining importance in the text.  Questioning remains an important reading comprehension strategy to be done before, during and after reading.  Students were excited this morning to get their very own Wonder File where they will record all of their wonderings from daily life and questions inspired by reading or learning topics.  

Ask your child about their Wonder File. 

Today, students had the opportunity to search for answers to some of their wonderings.  

Kids Google Search

Kid Rex Search

National Geographic

Math.

Our new math unit will focus on 3-digit addition and subtraction. We will connect past learning with place value and extend it further.  Students will apply ungrouping and regrouping with larger numbers. We will continue to work on problem solving and dig more into 2-step problems.  Students will learn to persevere and work through problems more thoughtfully remembering to check their answers. We will also be applying this concept to money with buying, selling and making change. 

Comparing and Contrasting.

Encourage your child to compare characters from different books.  We have been working on this strategy to deepen our understanding of a text.  Think about the similarities and differences and expand on them.  We have these kinds of discussions weekly with different books that we read together.  I enjoy seeing their confidence grow and they enjoy sharing their ideas.  Students have also been comparing and contrasting different versions of folktales as well. For example, just last week we looked at the American and Chinese Versions of Cinderella. Students enjoyed learning about the Chinese culture a little bit.