Week of January 8th

Grammar: This week's focus will be on adjectives and then moving into adverbs. Adjectives are words that describe or modify other words, making your writing and speaking much more specific, and a whole lot more interesting. Words like small, blue, and sharp are descriptive, and they are all examples of adjectives. An adverb is a word that tells us more about a verb. It "modifies" a verb (The man ran quickly). In the following examples, the adverb is in bold and the verb that it modifies is in italics. John speaks loudly. (How does John speak?) Mary lives locally. (Where does Mary live?) But adverbs can also modify adjectives (Tara is really beautiful), or even other adverbs (It works very well). Look at these examples: He is really handsome. (How handsome is he?)- That was extremely kind of you ..

Spelling: Spelling this week will focus on Consonant + le, al, el Syllable. Here is the regular word list: puddle, saddle, bottle, table, noble, bridle, nickel, label, global, canal. The high frequency words are 2nd grade words that need to be spelled correctly when writing. They are: along, never, run, second, tree, under. Some students have a modified list: handle, bundle, sample, simple, rumble, gamble, saddle, apple. The sight words they should practice are: along and under.

Reading: We will focus on summarizing what we read. Summarizing is an important skill to master since it helps students learn reading comprehension and hones writing proficiency. Students need to summarize articles, essays, events and short stories throughout their academic careers, including college. Properly breaking a short story down into its basic elements requires careful reading, preparation and explanation of the ideas from the text. A summary is a shortened version of a longer piece of reading. Rather than restating all the ideas from the story and telling each event that occurs, a summary of a short story relates the main events without extraneous detail. Very much like the response you may give when someone asks you what a new movie is about, the summary for a story gives the general plot using anywhere from one or two sentences to a short paragraph.

Writing: This 9 weeks focus will be Opinion Writing. The purpose of an opinion piece is to convince your audience to agree with your opinion. Introduce the topic or issue. State your opinion clearly. Give more than one reason to support your opinion. We will begin this week discussing what an opinion writing piece is and what the writing piece should have.

Math: Our focus this week will be on time. We will be working on telling time to the hour, half an hour, quarter past, quarter til, minute and also learning the difference between am and pm. Please help by practicing reading an analog clock at home and discussing what the shorter and longer hands mean.

Social Studies: We will focus on Martin Luther King Jr. this week. Martin Luther King Jr. was a Baptist minister and social activist, who led the Civil Rights Movement in the United States from the mid-1950s until his death by assassination in 1968.

Important Dates:

January 5th-Report Cards go home

January 12th- PTA Bingo Night

January 15th-MLK Jr. Holiday/No School

January 25th-Poetry Night at Davis

January 31st-Variety Show

A note from Ms. Thompson:

Coffee House Night on January 25!!!

Come join us as we transform the cafeteria into a coffee house and celebrate a night of poetry!

We will meet in the cafeteria for our poetry readings and some awesome snacks provided by our amazing PTA.

You may write your own poem or find one to read from a favorite poet.

We also would love a small handful of musicians to play before and after the poets read.

Be sure to see Ms. Thompson or your classroom teacher for a copy of the permission form and further details about the night.

See you soon!!