Second Quarter

Second quarter has passed by so quickly. In our previous post we shared all the special events of Advent. It is such a joy to be I. A Catholic school and share our faith in such special ways. We started the New Year with our unit on prayer. Special prayers have been written and placed in our prayer corner. This quarter we explored Native American cultures. Working in cooperative learning groups we researched using the iPads different tribes and designed posters to share with our classmates. Book reports were on Native American themes and a scene from the book was painted and created into totem poles. To culminate the unit we made dream catchers that are on display in our classrooms. In reading we shared as a group the novels The Best Christmas Paegant Ever and Annie and the Old One. We continue reading a variety of literature in guided reading and working on comprehensions skills of predictions, analyzing information and inferences. Writers' workshop has involved writing about personal events in our lives. It's fun writing on special memories. Our skills are improving as we work on nouns, verbs, and sentence structure in our grammar book. We continue reinforcing cursive writing. Math has been a challenge in understanding multiplication. Many strategies have been introduced such as illustrating groupings, arrays, using counters, and specific strategies for 2,4,5, and 9's. The challenge is to transfer this knowledge to fluency of the facts. The motivation is an "Ice Cream Sundae" party in completing our multiplication facts. We are finishing our units on Earth Materials and Sound. We are looking forward to starting Project Lead the Way. We will keep you posted!