Happy Friday!  Next week we will be starting our second unit in reading.  We will be learning about non-fiction texts.  We will practice identifying and using text features of non-fiction texts as well as adjusting our reading rate in order to understand non-fiction texts.  It would be wonderful if you practiced non-fiction at home.  We will be talking about functional documents as well as books, so sharing with brochures that come from school, or the lunch menu are great ways to practice real world skills for our non-fiction unit.  We will be talking about text boxes, pictures, captions, glossaries, and subtitles.
    In science we will start running tests on the minerals that we have in our kit.  I know that a few of you got to check out the game we play on brainpop.com to enhance our understanding of the properties that minerals have and how we can test minerals to identify them.
    Next week we plan to wrap up our chapter on mental math and estimation.  Our next chapter is on additions with regrouping (that is the same process that used to be called barrow and carry when we learned math).  If you came to our math night last month and received your free base ten blocks, those blocks will come in especially handy as you practice addition with regrouping at home.