October

2008

Language

Reading: We will continue to work on responding to reading in various ways and using various graphic organizers for this purpose. We will also continue to work on inferring, and retelling, relating, and reflecting in our reading. Our Daily 5 programme will begin to operate on a daily basis in its entirety.

We will also begin our Home Reading programme towards the end of this month. Your child will be bringing home books at their current reading level as well as other books that interest them. They will be required to record their nightly reading in a Reading Log and to write a comment about what they have read.

Writing: We will continue to explore the IDEAS trait and to focus on the 4 areas that work with this trait: Selection, Focus, Develop, Details. We will be writing in our journals each day during the Writing portion of the Daily 5 and will continue to focus on the IDEAS trait during our Writer's Workshop time. Our 3 main writing pieces this month will be our Thankful stories, Fall Stories, and Hallowe en Rebus stories.

Mathematics

Math: We will complete our Sorting and Graphing unit this month and begin a new unit on Number and Geometric Patterns. This unit will see us look at both growing and shrinking patterns, number patterns, and geometric patterns where 1 attribute changes. Towards the end of the month we will begin a unit in the Number Sense and Numeracy portion of the curriculum that will focus on place value, counting patterns, and number patterns in the hundreds chart.

Science and Social Studies

Science: October will see the completion of our unit on Plants. We will be having out test for this unit towards the end of the month. More information to follow closer to the time of the test.

Social Studies: We will begin our first unit on Early Settlers (Pioneers). We will be focusing on investigating and describing the communities of early settlers and First Nations people in Upper Canada around 1800. We will be researching interactions between new settlers and existing communities of First Nations peoples and French settlers and identify factors that helped to shape the development of the various communities. We will also compare communities of the past with those of the present.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact me.