For the Week of November 1st

Chess Club

Chess Club is going very well. The students seem to be enjoying the game and I can see growth in their thinking. For the next two weeks I will be taking a class after school. This means that I need to leave right after you pick up your students at 3:25. Please try to be in the Prairieview parking lot right at 3:25 so that I may leave promptly. Thank you so much!

3rd Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Csorba

We will be focusing on the following skills and strategies as we read The Chalk Box Kid this week: identifying character traits, setting, and problem/solution, summarizing, predicting, and making inferences.

4th Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Beseth

Mysteries will be the focus in reading for all fourth grade students next week. We will begin by learning vocabulary words that are typically associated with mysteries, such as “suspect”, “evidence” and “suspense”. Students may practice the definitions of the vocabulary words by completing a crossword puzzle at the following website: http://www.eduplace. com/kids/hmr06/gr4/activities/pdf/gr4_th1_xword.pdf. All students will read & study “The Case of the Purloined Pachyderm”. While reading this mystery and other mystery stories, students will be studying the format of a mystery and using the reading strategies of monitoring and clarifying.


5th Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Bucklin

This week, we will review all the skills we have studied so far this school year, specifically, summarizing, drawing conclusions, inferencing, identifying author generalizations, and visualizing while reading The Kid in the Red Jacket, a realistic fiction novel.

For the Week of October 25th

Chess Club

Be sure to come to chess club this week. I am going to show you a very short chess game and you will get a chance to try it out!

3rd Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Csorba

We will be focusing on predicting, making inferences, and cause and effect as we continue to work with Cliffhanger and other stories. The students will be applying the above comprehension strategies as they read. We will also be writing an extended response to the story Cliffhanger.

4th Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Beseth

This week we will be working on the skills of monitoring and clarifying. We will be learning some vocabulary used in mysteries and will also learn some idioms used in mysteries. We will be reading several mystery stories and seeing if we can monitor and clarify our thinking to come up with the solutions to the mysteries.

5th Grade Skills Reading Group with Mrs. Bucklin

We are working on making generalizations. We will also be working on vocabulary, making analogies. On Friday, we will make generalizations after reading two fun Halloween stories.

For the Week of October 18th

MAPS Testing

We will be MAPS testing all week. Please make sure that your child is well-rested and has eaten a good breakfast.

Chess Club

There will be no chess club on Wednesday, because of the half day. Monday's chess club will meet as usual.

3rd Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Csorba

We will continue to work on cause and effect, as well as making predictions and inferences as we read Cliffhanger.

4th Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Beseth

We will be reading The Parcel Post Kid. We will also work on breaking words into syllables, putting words in alphabetical order and finding the author's purpose.

5th Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Bucklin

We will be reading My Side of the Mountain and working on making inferences and drawing conclusions. There will be a vocabulary quiz on Friday.

For the Week of October 11

MAPS Testing

There is a new testing system being employed by the district this year. MAP testing stands for Measures of Academic Progress. These tests will be taken beginning next week, in the areas of Reading, Language, and Math. Students will take a series of multiple choice tests in each area on the computer. The program computes a score, which is then placed along a continuum to show each student's individual progress. It will even be able to show what particular areas each student excels at, and what areas they may need some additional support with. We are hopeful that this new system will help make our instruction for our students even better!

Chess Club

Since we do not have school on Monday, there will only be chess club for Wednesday's group this week. But don't worry - the next week we will only have Monday's club because we have a half day on Wednesday, the 20th.

3rd Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Csorba

This week we will begin the skill of identifying cause and effect. We will be using the anthology story of "Cliffhanger." We will also be doing vocabulary work with "Cliffhanger." We will practice our phonics skills using Patricia Cunningham's Making Words.

4th Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Beseth

The skills that we will be working on this week are questioning and noting details.


5th Grade Skills Reading with Mrs. Bucklin

We will continue to work on topic, main idea and details. We will do this by reading a nonfiction book called Saving Sea Turtles.

For the Week of October 4

Character Building Chess Club We had two good first sessions of chess club last week. It will be interesting to see if the students still remember what they learned last week. We will continue to work on learning all of the rules and hopefully get a game in also this week. Remember Mondays are for students whose last names begin with A-G and S-Z. Wednesday's club is made up of students whose last names begin wtih H-R.

3rd Grade Reading Skills Group with Mrs. Csorba

We will continue to work on the comprehension strategy of making inferences this week.

4th Grade Reading Skills Group with Mrs. Beseth

Next week our story is “Finding the Titanic” by Robert D. Ballard. The reading strategy that we'll focus on is text organization. Many non-fiction author's organize their selections in time order. They also use features such as headings, pictures, captions, and charts to help the reader better understand the information.

5th Grade Reading Skills Group with Mrs. Bucklin

This week we will focus on main idea and details. We will also be introducing story vocabulary on Monday and will be having a quiz on that vocabulary on Friday. The nonfiction piece we will be reading this week is "The Golden Lion Tamarin Comes Home."