Jan 28-Feb 1

Dear Families,

I hope you all had a nice week and are enjoying your weekends.  With many students having been sick last week, it was wonderful to have the every student back in class last week! Yay! Let's hope that the flu will not be passing through our room again.  Speaking of seasons... do we have enough cedar and mold in the air for everyone these days?? Fortunately, we know that this too shall pass! With TAG testing and Universal Screening behind us, we are getting back into the groove with our regular classroom schedule and have lots of interesting lessons planned for next week! Now, for the joke of the week... Have you ever wondered how a groundhog smells? With its nose, silly! :D
READING
Last week we examined how print and digital media both use pictures and graphics to attract the readers' attention and to influence them. This week we will learn about internet, video streaming and sound and movement in digital media .  This week each of us will design a toy advertisement in computer lab and learn how we can add attractive/juicy words and interesting fonts to our advertisements to make them more convincing to the buyers. 

WRITING
We will continue our focus on writing about Small Moments/ personal narratives for one more week. The children are at different stages in their writing. Some have published more than one story and some are editing and revising. We will continue practicing telling the important parts of our small moments, adding details to make our small moments more interesting. We will always continue working on using proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling the wordwall words correctly. 

MATH
This week we will learn strategies to use during subtraction.  These strategies will help us do subtraction mentally and quickly. Thinking addition and using the count on strategy is an efficient strategy when the number to be subtracted is less than 4. The count on subtraction facts can also be thought of as one-less than or two-less than, etc.  For example 8-1 can be thought of one-less than 8 or 1+7. This week we will focus on count on 1 subtraction and count on 2 subtraction. 
Don't be surprised to see some fact family activities coming home in the near future.

SOCIAL STUDIES
In our natural resources unit last week we learned about natural vs. man-made resources. All man-made resources are made from natural materials.  This week we will learn about the four main bodies of water on our planet; oceans, lakes, rivers, and streams are all vitally important to Earth and its inhabitants.  We will learn about the differences between salt water and fresh water and ways that we can conserve water.

REMINDERS
Thursday, Jan. 31st Science Fair.
Tuesday, Feb. 5th- 1st Grade P.E. program.
Wednesday, Feb. 6th – Early Release-dismissal at 12:45.
Library Day is on Thursday - Please check to see that your child has his or her library books ready to be returned by Wednesday night.

THANK YOU!!!
Computer Lab - Mr. Alagar
Tuesday Folders - Mrs. Tappe
Classroom Helpers - Mr. Postelnicu and Mrs. Castellani
Parent Readers - Mrs. Loschke and Mrs. Rodsari Sayyar
Homework Helpers - Mrs. VanMetre and Mrs. Bhatia