Welcome to 3^rd quarter! We are halfway through the year, so in order to start preparing students for 2^nd grade and teaching responsibility, we are no longer accepting late homework.  Student’s should be in the routine of writing down their homework in their agenda book every day, putting their homework in their blue folders, and bringing it back the next day completed.  The homework is updated on the blog every week so parents and students can expect when homework will be given. J

This week in Mrs. Zimmer’s Class!

*We have OLSAT testing on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week! Thursday will be the makeup day for the test if any students are absent.  Send your child with a good nights rest and a healthy breakfast! J

In Math, we are playing roll, climb, & slide to 120!  This game is similar to snakes and ladders. This game is a great exercise for practicing place value, addition, and subtraction.  The students write down their equations on a separate sheet of paper so they are showing all their work as they play!  Hopefully they will begin to see patterns and make predictions, which will help them develop a better math sense. 

In Science, we finished up our chapter on weather today by taking our test! Hopefully the review was helpful to those who completed it! J  We are jumping into our Physical Science unit, which starts with a chapter about observing matter.  Students will be learning about what matter is and how it can be described and changed.  We will start by talking about how we can describe objects.  I will have 5 bags that students will reach into, and then they will try to describe the object using 3 adjectives.  In their table groups, they will communicate to guess what they think the item is by using their descriptive words. At the end of the week, we may begin to talk about solids, liquids, and gases.

We will also learn new vocabulary words for this chapter.  Help your child make these words a part of their vocabulary when you talk together about different types of matter:

Matter

Solid

Liquid

Gas

Dissolve

Evaporate

In Health, we will discuss decision-making.  We will identify initial steps for making simple personal and/or guided decisions regarding home and classroom situations.  We will have a whole group discussion about specific scenarios to identify the problem, discover possible solutions, and pick the best choice. Then, students will do the same activity but in a small group, and they will complete their interactive notebook activity as a group.  Then, we will share the different scenarios of each group and the solutions they came up with.