Week of November 13-17

Grammar: This week's focus will be Possessive Nouns. Possessive nouns are nouns that show ownership or possession. Normally these words would be a singular or plural noun, but in the possessive form they are used as adjectives to modify another a noun or pronoun. In this example, 'cat's' is the possessive noun: The cat’s fur is a matted mess.

Spelling: Spelling this week will focus vowel diphthong /ou/ & /ow/ syllable. A diphthong is one vowel sound formed by the combination of two vowel sounds. A diphthong begins as one vowel sound and moves toward another, such as the vowel sounds in coin or loud. Here is the regular word list: down, shout, mouth, town, sprout, south, surround, powder, outside. The high frequency words are 2nd grade words that need to be spelled correctly when writing. They are: don't , head, last, put, saw, school, took. Some students have a modified list: cow, down, town, clown, town, out, shout, mouth, outside. The sight words they should practice are: don't, head, last.

Reading: We will be finishing up summarizing and synthesizing the elements of a story. Summarizing and synthesizing are both strategies used in reading and research. They are important skills, as they help learners make sense of what they reading. Summarizing is relating the most important points in a text (or a portion of a text) in our own words. In fiction we consider the basic story elements – main characters, setting, plot and sometimes theme in a summary. In nonfiction we pull together the most important information about a topic in a coherent way. Synthesizing takes the process of summarizing one step further. Instead of just restating the important points from text, synthesizing involves combining ideas and allowing an evolving understanding of text. When we synthesize, we pull together the most important points from our reading, but we move beyond what’s stated by the author. We focus on the insights that we gained from reading. We notice how our thinking changes as we read, so that when we finish, we can put our thinking and learning together in new ways

Writing: This 9 weeks focus will be Informational Writing. Informational writing is a type of nonfiction writing that conveys information about something, which means it is factual. Many examples of informational writing can be found in newspapers, almanacs, and reference books.Another difference between informational writing and other forms of nonfiction is that it does not involve characters. Informational writing does not generally focus on a person's life in the way a biography does. Instead, it usually provides information about the natural or social world . This week we will be gathering facts about animals and then writing about them.

Math: Our focus this week will be finishing up adding and subtracting to 100 using different strategies such as base 10 blocks, decomposing, and chunking on a number line. Refer to the pink fold-able that you were given at conferences if you need guidance. It is different from just the regular algorithm that most of us were taught. We learned base ten strategies this week when subtracting 2 digit numbers. We will continue next week with decomposing and chunking in subtraction with 2 digit number.

Social Studies: This week's focus will be on an important person in Georgia's history. Mary Musgrove was a colonial American interpreter and negotiator of mixed Yamacraw and English ancestry. She facilitated in the development of Colonial Georgia and became an important intermediary between Muscogee Creek Indians and the English colonists

Important Dates:

November 6-17: Canned Food Drive

November 20-24: Thanksgiving Holiday/No School