Safari Room Sentinel 2-18-13

I hope everyone is enjoying our President's Day Break! See everyone tomorrow!
This week...

Language Arts
This week we will be studying why we celebrate President's and President Lincoln and Washington and comparing what they did for America. We will continue using the comprehension strategy of Questioning as we learn about brave and influential African Americans who helped shape civil rights for America.

Our chunks for the week are: -oat, -ain -ake, and the -y ending making an e sound like in baby. Our words for this week are water, over, very, her, his, him and we will be studying the pronouns her,she, him, his.  We will also review the long e sound in words like sheep and read.

Social Studies
We will continue to identify and explain economics in first grade terms.

Writing
We are finishing up our Animal Research "All About" Books and will try some different presentation tools to share our learning with our learning community.

Math
We took our Unit 4 test and will be finishing learning loops on Tuesday and then moving on to Unit 5 to study different place value situations by representing two-digit numbers using drawings, using strategies to find 10 more and 10 less and model adding and subtracting two-digit numbers using the Make a Ten strategy for addition and subtraction.

*Please make sure you and your child view the first ShowMe lesson for homework by Wednesday, when we start unit 5. There is also a short additional video further explaining Make a Ten if you feel your child may need some extra practice at understanding. If you have trouble viewing these videos and have not already let me know, please do, so I can set up alternate viewing for your child.

Dates to Remember:
March 4 is our requested conference day. Please make sure to return your child's conference slip by February 22 so I can start to create my schedule based on requests or on the "as-needed" basis. Reminder, these are conferences that either you or I request - not for everyone, like in the fall. I hope that clears this up.

March 8 from 9:00 - 11:30 is our last field trip of the year. We will participate in the Seasonal Surprises program at DeGraaf Nature center. I am looking for 3-4 parent volunteers. Please let me know if you are interested!
March 29 - April 5: Spring Break!