September Newsletter

Welcome back on track! I hope you enjoyed your three weeks off! Each month I will be posting a newsletter letting you know what we will be focusing on that month for each subject. Here is what we will be learning in September:

1. Math- We are almost finished with Unit 1. Unit 1 is on comparing fractions, finding equivalent fractions, reducing fractions, changing fractions to mixed numbers and back, adding and subtracting fractions, and adding and subtracting mixed numbers. We will review and take the posttest in the next couple of days.

Unit 2 will be about reading and writing whole numbers and decimals to the thousandths, adding and subtracting whole numbers and decimals, and rounding and estimating decimals.

2. Reading- We have just started our class 40 book reading challenge! Students keep track of books in their reading notebook. Please encourage your child to read at home at least 30 minutes a night.

We will also be starting reading groups this month. In each group, we will be focusing on reading fictional stories and identifying story structure in those stories. We will use a story map to help us practice summarizing a story.

3. Writing- We are in the publishing and sharing stage of our paragraph about summer. Next week, we will begin writing a fictional short story.

For grammar, we have learned about what a complete sentence is, how to write possessive nouns, and how to fix sentence fragments. Next, we will be learning how to identify different types of sentences (declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, command).

4. Social Studies- We are learning about the explorers that discovered different parts of America. We are also learning how they influenced the places they settled in the Americas. We have been going through a simulation of what it was like to be an explorer and discover new lands and people.

5. Science- We will begin our first science unit next week. It will be on matter. It will include discovering what matter is, what states it exists in (solid, liquid, gas), and the differences between the chemical and physical changes it goes through.