Weekly Update May 2-6

Here's to hoping that May will bring regular warm temperatures along with the usual May flowers and fun events as we move towards the end of the year.  New blank, orange homework calendars will come home with your child on Monday.  Please choose literacy options from the back of the calendar to complete about three nights a week and return the calendar to school with your child on Fridays so we can share our adventures in reading and writing.  You can find the lunch menu here.

Upcoming Dates:
May 3: PALS Testing (Mrs. Flanagan will be our Guest Teacher)

May 12: Trail and Tailgate Family Night--more info coming home on Monday, RSVP is due back Friday, May 6th!

May 23: Family Event at the Kaukauna Public Library 6-7pm

May 26: 1/2 Day--Dismissal at 11:30

May 27 and 30: No School

June 1: Field Day--Stay tuned for more info, but if you are thinking about volunteering and will need a background check, please let us know ASAP!  Thanks!

June 2: Last Day of School--1/2 Day for Students

Reading: This last week of our Avid Readers unit will feel like a celebration as we focus our lens on reading poems.  We will use poems that we have learned throughout the year as well as a few new poems and think about how to read them by matching our voices to the rhythm and feel of the poem.  This will also be a great time to work on our phrasing and fluency--aka, not reading like a robot. We will try our hand at writing our own copycat poems to the tune or rhythm of well-known songs before wrapping up and celebrating with a day of poetry centers.

Writing: This week we will use a beloved story, Kunffle Bunny, to study the components of a true story and how another author uses them.  We will work to improve beginnings and endings to our stories and will also add character dialogue and feelings to make our stories more interesting to readers.  Using setting and character actions will be another way to push us to write more and more in our stories.  

Math:  Our math thinking will be pushed this week as we work to refine and master many different concepts we have covered this school year.  We will explore the various ways to compare and classify objects while keeping  mind important buzz words like: length, height, taller, shorter, more, less, heavier and lighter.  Explaining our thinking when we compare objects will also be important...math talk really helps us to understand our thinking.  We will also compare numbers by quantity using the terms greater than and less than.  Reviewing shape orientation and placement of the equal sign in equations will also be focused on this week.  Our centers will be:

• creating shapes and then doing a little writing about their attributes
• using dice to add and build towers to show the added quantity for numbers 2-12
• using ten frames to solve addition and subtraction equations
• using the iPad to listen directions and then build and draw using shape and position words

Science:  We will make our own balls this week and use what we learned about how balls moved based on the material they are made of, weight, and size to help us.  We will also test how our creations move and bounce.  Then we will move on to learning about and exploring ramps.  We plan to find and explore some large scale ramps in the gym or on the playground to build some background knowledge on the topic.

Word Work:  Our last round of new sightwords for the next two weeks are: they, first, next, last.  All four of these words are words that we are currently using to tell and write our true stories.