Picture day is this week! Our class is signed up for the slot just after lunch (12:30) on Friday, September 21^st. Please send your child with a tidy lunch that day so that no students are photographed wearing stained clothing!

Students are working together well in Chess. I love to see students teaching and learning with each other. We will play chess every Wednesday.

Study groups will begin next week. I will host a Language Arts tutoring/study group Tuesday mornings and a math tutoring/study group Wednesday mornings. They will be hosted in my classroom from 7:15 to 7:45. The topic will vary according to student need.

Starting this week, I will host a weekly lunch with the teacher. Working in alphabetical order, I will have lunch with one group of three boys or girls every Tuesday. Students do not need to bring anything special to this lunch. I am setting aside this time in hopes to develop stronger relationships with students. I am also hoping new friendships among students will stem from these lunches throughout the school year.

Science: This week, we are continuing our study of taxonomy and classification with the study of our final warm-blooded vertebrate, the mighty Order Mammalia! Today in class we discussed how vertebrates make up only 3% of the entire Animalia kingdom. We will discuss the overarching properties of the mammal as well as compare and contrast three seemingly different mammal species: the human, the dolphin, and the bear.

Language Arts: Riggs words can be found through a link on this blog or directly through the school website. We are finally getting into our Shurley textbooks. Today, we practiced our first jingles about nouns and verbs. By the end of the week, we will be classifying sentences with subject nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. In literature, we will read Shiloh chapters 9 and 10. We will finish the book by the end of the quarter. Students are really getting interested in the plot. We are making predictions and learning about cause and effect and making connections with the text as we read.

History/Geography: Students will take the Canada test tomorrow. The short unit about our neighbors up north comes to a close as we start to discuss rivers starting Wednesday. In the Rivers unit, we will learn about rivers around the world, touching on topics such as how rivers bring life to farms and cities and learning about historical and geographical significance of major world rivers, including the Yellow, Nile, Yangtze, Mississippi, Indus, Amazon, and Ganges Rivers.

Finally, please give your student an extra hug this week! Your children are working so hard and I am proud of them as their teacher. I hope you are also proud of the work of your children.