Ms. Mottaz's Class: Happy Friday

We hope that you had a wonderful week! Continue to be checking out Twitter or the sidebar on the blog page for pictures of what happened this week.

Upcoming Events

Your child brought home his/her geometry test on Monday. If you have not already reviewed, signed and returned this test please do so. We have you sign and return to make sure that you are aware of how your child is doing in math.
This week, we started our last math unit - I can't believe how quickly this year is coming to an end. We talked more in depth with fractions. Your child is expected to be able to partition a shape into halves, thirds and fourths, and be able to identify what a shape is partitioned into.
Next week, we will continue to reinforce fractions, learning about subtracting multiple digit numbers, and reviewing counting coins.

This week, the students worked EXTREMELY hard on editing and revising their Which is Better writing. We worked on adding voice to our writing - this is something that we are going to continue to work on for the rest of the school year.
Next week, we will start publishing our 10 page book!!!! This is typically is our students favorite piece of writing and they will be super excited to share it with you at the Lunch Bunch/Writing Celebration on May 17.

This week, students were introduced to dramas (no no the drama that sometimes happens in second grade but reading plays). Students are expected to be able to identify the setting and characters in a drama, and how the dialogue advances the plot of the story. We also talked about what an Act is versus a Scene. We discussed the idea if math is the act then stations are like the scenes. We started with a drama that is familiar ("The Three Little Pigs").
Next week, we will be continue to reading dramas but in a less familiar story. We will then move into identifying the main idea and supporting details of a nonfiction text.

We started talking about long o vowel team of oa, oe, and ow. We learned that "oa" comes when the long o sound is in the middle of a word and the "oe" & "ow" comes at the end of a word. We also discovered that "ow" also can be in the middle of a word like grown or thrown. Today, the students made a up a rule about when "ow" can be found in the middle of the word - ask your child about it!!
Next week, we will continue to talk about the long o vowel teams and have our end of the unit test. We took a checkup today to see how the students are doing with this skill and they made goals based on what they need to work on. Ask your child what they need to focus on for the test (some students got a 100% on this checkup and did not make a goal).

We continued to work on food chains. We know that all food chains start with the sun and then a producer (plant, nut or seed). Then, comes the primary and secondary consumers. This week, we added decomposers and scavengers to our food chains. Mrs. Ross taught the students a fancy word for decomposer - ask your child what it is!!
Next week, students are making their very own food chain based on an ecosystem and then moving into learning about food webs.

I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and please let me know if you have any questions! :)