In Language Arts, we are now in the middle of  our sixth book of 
the Treasures series.  The students have enjoyed reading the books 
that go with each story.  We have studied the short vowels and are 
now concentrating on long vowels.   We have activities that put a new 
letter and letter blends in front of each word family. The students 
like these activities and like seeing different words.  We have also 
learned what a noun is, a proper noun is and are concentrating on 
what verbs are and what they do in a sentence.  They have been 
introduced to adjectives and the importance of using them in their 
writing.  The students like thinking about them and identifying 
them.  We are focusing on triple consonants with word families.  The 
students learned what the apostrophe does when they see a contraction 
word.
     We have finished our fourth quarter in Math. The students 
have really worked on identifying 3 types of story problems.  The 
ones that have the unknown number at the beginning of a math 
sentence, the middle and the ending.  We continue to work on our 
computation skills for addition and subtraction of math facts to 10.  
Currently we are focusing on the strategies to solve a word problem.  
The strategies we use are:  number line, 100's chart, pictures, tally 
marks,cubes, and 10 frames.  This is a developmental concept, and 
with time, each child will understand this concept. We have also 
finished a unit of 3-D shapes. The students really liked the unit.  
They got to build replicas of these shapes using playdough and 
toothpicks. I did encourage them to "try this at home!" We have also 
been working with fractions and enjoying a lot of learning math games.
     We continue to learn our ROAR behavior and participate in various
activities for that. An emphasis on ROAR behavior is stressed daily.  
We have just earned 300!  We have our Roar assembly Thursday the 
31st.  The students challenged themselves to get to 300 before the 
end of the year  and they made it and achieved their personal goals!  
Please encourage your child to contribute his/her best behavior 
towards our class goal!  We certainly do like each and every Roar 
award, as it adds up! 
    Guided reading has gone well this year.  All are reading in their 
own reading level and have progressed very nicely.  After lunch we 
continued our daily 5 as well.  The students have been able to read 
to self and have finished their writing, word work and listening 
center portions of this system. 
     We have finished our Science unit for the Spring.  The students 
learned about the 3 main cloud types, the water cycle and 
thunderstorm safety.   
       Please remember to continue to dress your child in layers, as 
it still does heat up in here in the afternoons.