Sulima's Scoop - Week of October 1

Welcome October!



Weekly Reminders:
*Mrs. Cavoto's students need their worms on Monday.
*Lesson 5 spelling pretest on Monday.
*Final magazine turn-in on Tuesday. Will our class earn a pig? Will the 4th grade teachers serenade the fourth graders...in their pajamas?
*Unit 5 English test on Tuesday.
*Lesson 5 spelling test on Friday.
*Worm Race Tracks due Friday. (Mrs. Sulima's Class)
*No school on Monday, October 8 - Columbus Day.

English:
The children will take the Unit 5 English test on Tuesday. A "how to study" sheet was sent home on Thursday. The concept that seems to be tricky for some is quotations. Please practice correct use of quotations with your child. The rest of the week, we will use our English time to work on our picture books. We will take our next English pretest during the week of October 8th.

Reading:
This week our focus will be on the four types of questions. On Tuesday, we will review "right there" questions. The answers to these questions are found right there in the text. We will also discuss "on my own" questions. These questions can usually be answered by using your own personal knowledge. On Wednesday, we will work with "think and search" questions. The answers to these questions are found throughout the text not just in one place. On Thursday, our focus will be "author and me" questions. These are inference questions. The reader needs to use there own personal knowledge plus information the author gives in the text to answer this type of question. We will be using these 4 types of questions throughout our first novel unit which we will begin during the week of October 8.

Science:
Mrs. Sulima's Class - We will continue our worm observations this week. The questions we will focus on this week are: Can a worm detect odor? On which surface does a worm move most easily? All of our experiments will help us in the next step of our worm study. Each child will create a race track based on their worm observations. The children will receive the race track guidelines on Wednesday. Our worm races will be on Friday.
Mrs. Cavoto's Class - The children will bring in their worms on Monday. To begin the week, we will just observe our worms. On Tuesday, we will begin our experiments to answer the following questions: On which surface does a worm move most easily? Does the worm prefer damp or dry surfaces? How do different parts of a worm react to touch? and Can worms detect odor? Worm containers will be brought home over the weekend to make sure our worms have fresh moist soil.

Social Studies:
Mrs. Cavoto will begin the Northeast unit. Please visit her blog at http://ccavotoccsdorg.blogspot.com/ to find out more about what your child will be learning this week. Northeast maps are due on Monday.

Math: (For Mrs. Sulima's Math Students Only)
On Monday, the children will be doing a checkpoint review. This will cover the mental math addition and subtraction strategies, estimating sums and differences, and adding greater numbers with regrouping. The rest of the week our focus will be on subtraction with regrouping.

Website of the Week

Find out more about the four types of questions at:
http://www.literacymatters.org/content/readandwrite/question.htm