Weekly Update

We had a fabulous week learning in room 13 this week!

We starting learning about multiplication and it's relationship to division! It's still challenging, but we are working really hard. In the coming weeks we will begin working on multiplication facts.  For now, we are working on skip counting by twos and threes.  A great way to get better is to practice.  A fun way to practice is to skip count in the car.  When the light turns red, try skip counting ten times (so if you are skip counting by twos you'd count to 20).  See if you can get there before the light turns green.  If that's too easy, try counting forward and backward before it turns green!

In reading we've been working on checking ourselves for comprehension.  Everyone reported having trouble remembering to do this. We will keep working on it, but if you read books together at home this can be a great activity to do together.  We talked about how great it is to read with someone else! We also talked about making predictions based on clues in the text. We've got some great reading detectives, so we had some great prediction discussions!

In writing we've been drafting our first narrative stories.  We've learned a few reasons why you'd start a new paragraph (new location, change in time, and a switch in speaker). It's been very difficult for everyone, but we're making good first steps.  We also worked on trying to grab the reader's attention in the introduction.

In Fundations, we discussed adding suffixes to the ending of base words to make them plural or to change tense. This coming week we will talk about "1-1-1 words" and how they can change when a suffix is added.

We are wrapping up our solar system unit.  A test date and study guide will be coming. In the mean time we'll be continuing our discussion about the moon phases, solar eclipse, and lunar eclipses. Then we will be reviewing the planets.

Lastly, we learned about Caine's Arcade and we are all inspired to take part in the Cardboard Challenge. This year's official challenge is scheduled for October 1st, however we are going to participate in our own scaled back version at JFK in November. Stay tuned for more details, but please check out and learn the story of Caine's Arcade.

Caine's Arcade - Cardboard Challenge