Hope everyone is refreshed after a long weekend! With routines down, learning and projects are really rolling now as we dive into September.  Here’s what we’re up to this week:

Math: We’re digging into our second unit of the year.  This unit is really all about problem solving skills.  We will be focused on making words into numeric expressions and equations, learning about order of operations, and making pictures and diagrams to make sense of word problems.

Language: Having learned about the subjects and objects of sentences, we will now start a deeper dive into nouns. This week, we will learn about concrete and abstract nouns, review common and proper nouns, and practice the different ways to make nouns plural (including noncount nouns like “sheep”, “furniture,” and “dust”).

Writing: We are using this first unit of the year to review the different stages of the writing process.  So far, we have practiced forms of prewriting and drafting. Starting with a draft of an opinion paragraph this week, we will learn about the revision process, looking specifically for ways we can improve sentence fluency by varying sentence beginnings and lengths.

Reading: Students will be finishing up their folktale pamphlets this week.  This project asks students to analyze the literary elements of a unique, new-to-them folktale.  They will show off what they’ve learned about character, setting, conflict, plot, and purpose. As we wrap up that mini-project, students will be starting the final folktale project, which will ask them to create a family folktale highlighting some favorite aspects of their family culture.

Social Studies: Students will be practicing expository writing as they turn their research on prehistoric peoples into well-structured paragraphs.

Science: After completing a lesson on tectonic plates, students will be conducting an experiment to see how convection currents move material that floats on the surface.  This experiment will attempt to recreate scientists’ theories about how moving rock in the mantle causes the pieces of Earth’s crust to move over time.

Word Work: This is a vocabulary-focused week.  Students will be learning vocabulary from the novel Alice in Wonderland in preparation for reading it next week.