Week of March 2, 2010

March is here, bringing Women’s History Month and the Science Fair! For Women’s History Month, the book report is to be on a biography of a woman. You many choose any of the suggested creative, but think coming in character as the woman you learned about is a great way for your classmates to “meet” her.
The February book reports were well-done and enhanced our social studies’ learning!

Homework
For March there will be 1 Story Map due, by Tuesday, March 16 (It’s lavendar, coming home today.) on a biography of a woman. Your oral report & project are due any day in March.
Daily: Build your reading fluency by reading aloud to a parent several times a week. Practice vocabulary & basic math facts!! And do the cursive & Home Links the night they come home!
Due Thursday: Spelling workbook, pages 98-101
Discuss at home: What work are you doing on your Science Fair this week?

Reading & Social Studies Our learning about the Colonial Period continues this week, as we continue reading a biography of Paul Revere, then read Six Silver Spoons, historical fiction in which the main characters encounter Revere on his famous ride. We’ll also learn about another hero of the American Revolution, Casmir Pulaski, in whose honor we had yesterday’s holiday. Eleanor, Ava, Sydney, Nina, Jane and Jeremiah will bring to life the culture & political tension of the pre-Revolutionary days as they present a little play “Tea for Felicity”.
Our spelling words work with the rule about when to double a final consonant before adding a suffix that begins with a vowel---this is an important rule to learn!
In the computer lab we are typing up our writing about our Dinosaur field trip. We hope to have it into a power point slide show available for you to see when you come to our Science Fair on 3/18!

Math: We continue to work with addition and subtraction of 2-digit numbers; for story problems we are using excellent graphic organizers to sort out the facts we know, so we can see more clearly which operation to use in solving the problems. We will work with base 10 blocks to build a better foundation of understanding how we can do short-cuts such as “borrowing”, now called “trade first”.

Science: Sink & Float. We will make boats of different size, shape, weight and capacity as we continue to explore the properties of buoyancy.

Attached: Lavendar Story Map form for March biography; Home Link 6.2, new spelling words; vocabulary & social studies tests.

I was so sorry I was sick last week and had to miss both Wednesday’s and Friday’s evening performances by our students, but I hear that they did an excellent job both evenings!! I’m glad so many of you were able to come too!