Spring is Here!

Reading

The students read folktales, recipes, and poems this week. They worked on reading each genre closely, so that they could answer comprehension questions about the texts. Some of the questions were very tricky and required the students to look back into the text AND do some thinking as well! We will continue to work on these skills next week.

This week, the students learned about prefixes and suffixes. They went on a “prefix hunt” around the room to look for words containing the prefixes “un” and “re.” They’ve learned that prefixes and suffixes change the meaning of a root or base word.

Here are some of the affixes they have studied:

Re- again

Pre- before

Un- not or the opposite

Mis- wrong or not

-ed  in the past

-ing  happening now

-ful  full of

Spelling

The students studied long vowel words where you drop the “e” to add any suffix that begins with a vowel, like “ed” or “ing.” You find this pattern in words like hoping and hoped. Next week, the students will work on doubling the ending of short vowel words before adding a suffix, like with the words hopping and hopped.

Grammar

This week, we played some games to review where to put commas. The students have learned to put commas in lists, between the names of a city and state, and in dates like the following: Friday, March 29, 2019. We will continue studying commas and apostrophes next week.

Writing

Many of the students began their mystery food paragraphs! Their goal was to use as many sensory details as they could to describe a food without using the food’s name. Then their reader guessed which food they are describing based only on their description! This project encourages each writer to use as many sensory details as possible.

Math

The students completed unit seven this week and are ready to begin studying fractions! I don’t know about you, but fractions caused me a lot of stress when I was in school. I never understood why my mom kept drawing that pie and making me give out the pieces! To avoid that feeling, the students will have the opportunity to complete several projects that help them picture how fractions work in their everyday lives. They will practice splitting up items into groups, draw helpful images like candy bars, play fraction games, and fold paper to see the different fraction pieces. Some of the concepts covered in this unit are: finding equivalent fractions (1/2 = 2/4), determining fractions of a collection (what is 1/5 of 15 pennies?), and comparing fractions (what is greater, 2/3 or ½?) We usually have a lot of fun in the fractions unit!