• Thank you for continuing to review your child's Weekly Reflection!  Reflection and goal-setting are lifelong habits worth cultivating. 
• Please consider signing up to help to Cultural Night on October 2nd.  
• On Monday, Crestwood will have an Intruder Drill in the afternoon.  We will discuss the procedures for this drill but not have much discussion beyond that.  Students usually come up with many "What if...?" questions, so you may want to touch base over the weekend or on Monday depending on what you feel is best for your child.  

Friday, September 25

No School, Professional Development Day for teachers

Monday, September 28

Chess Club

Tuesday, September 29

Wednesday, September 30

Picture Day

Thursday, October 1

Friday, October 2

Cultural Day & Night, 6:30-8:00 pm

Science

Students started a unit with Mrs. Branding this week and focused on learning the scientific method.  

Parker and Madison record observations about a leaf from our playground.


Brenden, Aniya, & Monissa practice measuring.


Ivy, Sanni, & Autumn work together to measure the mass of different objects.

Math

Rocket Math is really helping us to improve our multiplication fluency!  We practice a few days week and do a monthly assessment.  Our class average grew 11 points this month!

We also practiced addition and subtraction with whole numbers.  Students learned and used important math terms like addends, sum, minuend, subtrahend, and difference.  

Reader's Workshop
As a class, we are reading Kate DiCamillo's The Tiger Rising.  We've harvested, or collected, a few words from the story so far.  Words we want to incorporate into our speaking and writing include lurch, defiant, and gravelly.  Students also learned about retelling and synthesizing a story.  To retell means to tell the big events in the order they occurred.  To synthesize means to talk about the part you just read and how it relates to the big picture.  

 

Writer's Workshop 

We are drafting away on our Realistic Fiction stories, and students have been working so hard!  We learned that authors of RF use paragraphs to organize their writing.  They begin a new paragraph when the setting changes, when a new character talks, and when time moves.  Students also learned a few specific strategies to stretch a moment.  One way to do this is to add the character's inner thinking.  Adding inner thinking shows the reader the character's motives and emotions. Writers can also show action by describing the character's body movements.

Writing partners, Haylee & Ivy, work together to stretch a moment.  

Sanni uses a whisper to read his work aloud before moving forward.  

Aniya & Jayden take some "good" writing and make it even better by stretching the moment. 

Brenden, Aniya, & Jayden teach the class some new strategies for stretching a moment.  

In our Flyer Families this week, students discussed what it means to be proactive. Habit #1 is all about taking charge of oneself and being the boss of one's behaviors, actions, and attitude.

• There is no Weekly Reflection coming home today. We were on a roll with a few other things today, and time just got away from us!
• Midterm Reports will come home on Monday of next week. Students completed the Character & Work Ethic section as a form of self-reflection. Please sign and return on Tuesday.
• Some evenings, you will see your child has written "Read 20+ minutes ________________" in his/her planner. The blank is for students to record the title of the book (s)he read. This assignment is homework and not an option for students to complete.

Monday, September 21

Tuesday, September 22

Wednesday, September 23

Thursday, September 24

Happy birthday, Haylee! 

Moms & Muffins @ 8:00 am 

Our first Spelling test

Staff vs. 5th Grade kickball game @ 2:00 pm, parents welcome!

Friday, September 25
No School, Teacher Professional Development Day

Math

We learned about three properties of addition.  The Identity Property states that any number plus zero is that same number.  The Commutative Property states that changing the order of addends does not change the sum.  The Associative Property States that grouping addends differently does not change the same.  Can you label each example with a property?

• 49 + 12 = 12 + 49
• 335 + 0 = 335
• (7 + 8) + 2 = 7 + (8 + 2) 

Students also participated in Workstations.  Workstations allow kids to review previous skills and spend time working on ALEKS.

Writer's Workshop
We learned about theme, an author's important message or life lesson that (s)he teaches through Realistic Fiction writing.  We also studied three types of leads and began drafting our stories!

Monissa glued leads from some of our favorite books into her Writer's Notebook.

Reader's Workshop

We learned about reading intensely and started Kate Dicamillo's Tiger Rising.  This book helped us to harvest, or collect, a few new words that we'd like to incorporate into our writing and speaking:  lurch and defiant.  

• A Weekly Reflection is coming home today. Please check it out to learn about your child's proud moments and goal for next week, sign, and return on Monday.
• Crestwood Fun Fair is tomorrow, 11 am - 3 pm!  The weather forecast looks beautiful, and it should be a fun time for all. PTO is still in need of volunteers for the second half of the fair. Sign up here if you can help out!
• We will have our first Flyer Family time and early release next Wednesday. Students will meet with their same Family from last year. New faces will include new staff members, Kindergarten students, and any new students to Crestwood. Students should wear their Flyer Family shirts on this day. We will learn and practice Habit #1: Be Proactive. Being proactive means "I am in charge of my feelings and behavior."

Monday, September 14

Our first spelling list will come home this day, test 9/24

Tuesday, September 15

Wednesday, September 16

Flyer Families, wear t-shirts

Early Release @ 1:40 pm

Thursday, September 17

Dad's Club meets at Smugala's @ 7:30 pm, all Crestwood dads are welcome!

Friday, September 18

Math

Mrs. Farhatt helps students to challenge with place value and multiplication after finishing an assignment.  

Ivy and Aniya work together to round large numbers to a given place.  

CJ watches Madison write expanded form for a standard number he created.  

Writer's Workshop
We started learning about Realistic Fiction, our first unit of study for the school year.  Students learned the special characteristics of this genre and brainstormed seed ideas for their stories.  We also spent time creating a summary and developing our main characters.

Parker shares an idea for her story with the class.  

Reader's Workshop

We continued building our reading stamina this week, and we explored the different types of thinking readers do.  Thoughtful readers have reactions, make connections, ask questions, and share predictions.  

Autumn & Jayden record their thinking in their Reading Journals.  

We are leaders!

Math
In Math this week, we learned about the place of digits and the value each holds.  We practiced writing numbers in three forms:  standard, word, and expanded.  We compared and ordered numbers, thinking about which are greater, less, and equal.  We finished the week by learning some steps to round numbers.

Writer's Workshop
Students continued generating ideas in our Writer's Notebooks this week.  We'll use these ideas from our own lives in our upcoming Realistic Fiction unit.



Students created personal maps of their bedrooms, homes, neighborhoods, or schools and recorded memories from different locations.


We also created memory chains, listing ideas about given topics.

Reader's Workshop
Students learned to ask the important question, "Am I comprehending?" One strategy we tried was using our reading journals to write about each of these

• Who is in the story? What is happening? Where is this taking place?
• What am I picturing in my mind?
• What am I feeling?

Answering these questions helps us to gauge if we are comprehending.  If we struggle with a question, rereading will save the day! 

Social Studies

We studied geography (our earth)!  Kids learned songs to help them remember the 7 continents and 5 oceans.  Students also drew and labeled their own model Earth, which included lines of latitude and longitude, the equator, prime meridian, and a compass rose.