Friday News!

Happy Friday! Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math: Students are becoming subtraction masters! We've had a lot of focus on 3-digit subtraction and this week we moved on to subtracting across zeros. Every day we add up our reading log minutes and subtract them from our goal of 20,000 to figure out how many minutes we have left until we reach our goal, so students have already gotten pretty good at this!

Social Studies: With the start of America came many new inventions that changed the world! Students learned about the transcontinental railroad, the elevator, the light bulb, and the first car. Intrigued by the new inventions that advanced America, students came up with their own inventions to even further change today's world.

Reading: Reading this week focused on skills that help us become better readers. We are constantly reviewing how to answer comprehension questions after reading a selection and how to restate an answer to a question. Students are finally getting good at this! We also learned about antonyms and synonyms and made tri-folds with examples.

Writing: Continuing to work on grammar, this week we focused on common nouns, proper nouns, plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, and possessive nouns. Today we combined everything that we have learned this week to start a story about a time we were thankful making sure to use all the types of nouns we have learned about.

Science: We are finally wrapping up our astronomy unit! This week we learned about comets and meteors. We also completed our study guide. We will be taking our test on Monday, so make sure students are studying over the weekend!

Religion: We ended Chapter 5 in religion this week with our quiz today. We also spent time using the Columbian Mission Education Program were we are learning to have respect for all God's people. We discussed what it means to have dignity and human rights. Students made a picture of themselves and decorated it with words that represent our uniqueness. We are all children of God!

Reminders:
- Parent teacher conferences are on Tuesday!
- Report cards will be sent home on Monday
- Book fair will be open one last day on Monday and then during parent teacher conferences
- We have early dismissal per usual on Monday and 10:30 dismissal on Tuesday

Have a great weekend!
- Miss Rizzo

Ornament activity with our faith partners!

Weekly News 11/12/15

Week 13 of school already! Wow, time has been flying by! Here’s a look at what we did this week:

Writing – Now that we are all done with our personal narratives, we are focusing on grammar for a little while again. Students took a pretest on Unit 2 for grammar and most did pretty well! This week they learned how to distinguish between common nouns and proper nouns. We also spent Veteran’s Day writing thank you letters to Veterans.

Science – In science this week, we compared the amount of time it takes each planet to orbit the Sun. In order for student to be able to visualize the different orbits, we took a trip to the gym and had 9 students represent the Sun and the 8 planets. They each stepped at the same time and we were able to see which planets take the shortest amount of time to orbit the sun, and which take the longest.

Social Studies – Continuing on in our Unit about the start of America, we learned how communities started to become cities. Students learned vocabulary words such as industry, migration, immigrant, and discrimination. They also put on little skits/story lines about what life was like in the 1800s.

Religion – Jesus brings the good news! This week we focused on Jesus bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God. We also learned about people who became disciples of Jesus and discussed what words describe a good disciple.

Math – Math this week switched from addition to subtraction. Students are learning new strategies to understand why we sometimes have to borrow when we are subtracting multiple digit numbers. We learned all about how place value factors into subtracting, but we are also trying to focus on the standard algorithm so students are not getting confused (like they did with addition!).

Reminders:

- No school tomorrow

- Pep rally tonight

- Scholastic book fair is next week!

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

11/11/15

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due tomorrow, test tomorrow
Reading: reading log
Math: pg. 72 #9-18 - no need to draw place value blocks
English: pg. 79 #6-20
Science: lesson 16 review

Homework 11/10/15

Homework:
Spelling: Spelling contract due Thursday, test Thursday
Math: P 3-6 in workbook
Reading: Reading log

Weekly News

Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math – Math this week has focused on adding three or more numbers and problem solving by drawing a picture to help. Many students are getting very good at adding larger numbers, but we still need to practice our basic math facts. Next week will lead us into subtracting with three digit numbers.

Science – Science this week was a lot of fun with our field trip to the Adler Planetarium! Students were able to explore different exhibits to extend their learning and see what they already knew about the solar system. We were also able to attend to great shows that made us feel like we were actually in space! In class, we continued our learning with terrestrial planets and gas giants.

Reading – Our story for reading this week, Spiders at Work, was a nonfiction story that told us all about the many spiders in the world and how some are helpful and harmful. We are focusing on comprehension, or understanding, of our reading and using complete sentences to answer comprehension questions.

Writing – Students wrote about a family hero for the 11^th ward essay contest and four were chosen to be entered. We also started to present our printed and published personal narratives! Students seem very proud of their work, but we are eager to move on after such a long unit!

Social Studies – After the American Revolution, colonists started to move west. Students are learning all about Lewis and Clark and the big westward movement of the early colonists.

Religion – Our new chapter in religion is all about Jesus, the Son of God. This week’s focus was on why God sent Jesus to us. Children learned the meaning of the name Jesus, and why we call Jesus the Messiah. We sequenced the presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

Reminders:

- No school tomorrow - teacher in service

- We are collecting box tops in hopes of winning a dress down day

- Parent teacher conference times were sent home in Friday folders

- Next week is spirit week!

Monday: Wear your favorite college sports t-shirt or jersey

Tuesday: Show your BCA bandit pride

Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday - dress crazy!

Thursday: Decorate your head to fit your style - Hawkeye's dress down

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

11/4/15

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due tomorrow, test tomorrow
Reading: Reading log
Math: Pgs. 68-69 #4-9
Social Studies: Time Line WS

Reminders:
- Still accepting Trivia Night donations!!
- No school on Friday

11/3/15

We had a blast on our field trip today! Thanks to all of the parents who chaperoned. Not a lot of homework tonight due to the lack of instruction in the classroom.

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due Thursday
Reading: Reading log