Curriculum Update September 3-6

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday weekend! It was really nice to finally get some rain, but have the sunshine come back out.

Thank you for sending in all the supplies for our solar cookout. It is greatly appreciated and will truly make the day a success. The cookout will take place on Thursday.

Reading: We will  continue reading about types weather, weather instruments, and narrative weather stories for the next four weeks.
Last week, we worked on explaining how the author uses illustrations to help the meaning in a story and understanding the meaning of words and phrases in science texts. This week, we will focus on finding the main idea of information being read and finding key details.
For the natural disaster groups, the students are asking and answering questions to show understanding of what they are researching and reading.

Writing: We are going to begin working on our narrative piece. Students are finishing up their "Look outside your window" writing. They are using it compare/contrast with a class in Shanghai, China we are partnering with to complete this project. We will also write letters to one of our pen pal classes in California this week.

Grammar: We continue working on capitalization (beginning words, titles and proper nouns). We will also use correct ending punctuation and focus on nouns. The students learned symbols and chants to go with these.

Math: We will take the topic 1 performance assessment on Tuesday. Wednesday, we will begin topic 2. We are going to learn about addition meanings and properties, subtraction meanings and using mental math to add and subtract.

Spelling/Vocabulary: The spelling and vocabulary tests will be on Friday. We will continue practicing in class. Please remember for vocabulary, the students will need to choose at least 8 of their words to use in their writing.

wind vane: an instrument that determines what direction the wind is blowing
barometer: an instrument that measures how much the air is pressing down, or air pressure
rain gauge: an instrument that collects rain and measures how much rain has fallen
anemometer: an instrument that measures the wind speed
thermometer: an instrument that measures how hot or cold the air is
forecast: a prediction or estimate of future events
prediction: to guess what will happen in the future based on facts or knowledge
meteorology: the study of the atmosphere and all its phenomena, including weather and how to forecast it
cold front: a boundary between two air masses, one cold and the other warm, moving so that the cold air replaces the warm air
warm front: a boundary between two air masses, one cold and the other warm, moving so that the warm air replaces the cold air
debris: pieces of something that have been destroyed or broken
gust: a sudden, powerful rush of wind
radar: a system that uses radio waves to find the location and the speed of objects
Fujita Scale: the scale that measures the strength of tornadoes based upon wind speed
damage: harm

Have a fantastic week!