Weekly Update

All-Star
Muhammad was our Awesome All-Star this week! Students enjoyed hearing about his sharing sack items, including a pottery fish and Fitbit. He read aloud his favorite book, which many other students loved too--The Very Hungry Caterpillar. On Thursday, Muhammad had a special lunch with his dad. He ended the week with a book of compliments from Room 13.

Reading Workshop
We continued to discuss strategies good readers use to understand a story. We focused on making predictions and retelling text. Below is a picture of an anchor chart hanging in our room. As you read with your child at home, you can practice these reading strategies. We will continue to practice them in small reading groups.

Writing Workshop
This week students worked on identifying the heart of their story (most important part). Once they identified the heart of their story, they tried elaborating it by adding details to help the reader make a movie in their mind. Students also practiced telling the internal story along with the external story. The internal story includes what the characters are thinking and feeling.

Math Workshop
We wrapped up Unit 1 this week. We continued to practice solving word problems and reviewed for the Unit Test. Students are so used to solving multiplication and division word problems. When a subtraction word problem was thrown in, only 4 students solved it correctly. We learned to slow down and read carefully! Students also learned to play two new math games in class.

Science
We started our second set of investigations learning about hot and cold water. Students built a thermometer with a glass bottle, rubber stopper, and straw. We filled the bottles with green room-temperature water.  Then we put the glass bottles in hot and cold water. When the glass bottles were put into the hot water, students could see the green water expand or rise up into the straw. When the glass bottles were put into the cold water, students could see the green water contract or fall back down the straw.
We also learned about density.  The pictures below show this investigation in action. Students learned that hot water is less dense than room temperature water and cold water is more dense than room temperature water.