Reading

As we move into our first full month of school, we will focus on activating and connecting to our reading.  Using fiction and nonfiction pieces of writing, students will be accessing background knowledge while we question, infer or synthesize the information read. As students read more and more nonfiction writing, they will practice letting go of misconceptions they may have about a particular topic so that they are able to absorb new and more accurate information.  Students will also use strategies to help them recognize new information, think about it, and keep track of their new learning.

Writing

We will continue to develop our narrative writing in the month of September.  Students are in the process of choosing a seed idea to take all of the way through the writing process.  Students will establish a situation, develop a character within that situation, and write a story that follows a natural sequence of events.  Students will use dialogue, descriptive actions, thoughts, and feeling, as well as words that signal order of events, and finish the story with a sense of closure.  The goal of this genre of writing is for students to write well-elaborated realistic fiction stories. 

Math 

After finishing our unit on Arrays, Factors, and Multiplicative Comparison, the second half of September will find our math focus shift to Unit 2: Generating and Representing Measurement Data. This particular unit develops students' ideas about collecting, representing, describing, and interpreting data.  Students will collecting data regarding heights of 1st and 4th graders.  This data will allow students to practice and fine-tune multiple ways to represent the information gathered. Data gathered will be analyzed and interpreted by students to show their understanding.  This is always an exciting unit for our students. 

Science

We have been progressing through our ecology unit, and will continue to do so for the remainder of September.  As a culminating activity, students will create a brochure showcasing an endangered species and the effect it would have on other living things and its environment if it were to go extinct. To solidify our learning, we will be taking a field trip on October 5th to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo where we will learn more about current conservation efforts.