Math: We will start a new math curriculum this week. Please refer to the Mrs. Phoenix’s email that was sent about this change. Our new curriculum is My Math. This Chapter will focus on addition strategies for adding, subtraction, and word problems. This week will add three numbers, count back to subtract, learn strategies for solving word problems, and use fact families to solve. 

Science: We will begin our first science unit this week with lessons focusing on identifying the characteristics of animals. We will use our Mystery Science videos to guide our discussions. We will sort animal cards into mammals, birds, reptiles, and invertebrates. Then, the students will be challenged to make decisions about animals that don’t fall neatly into any of those categories. 

Language Arts: During Writing, we will, edit, publish, illustrate, and share our personal narratives. Later in the week, we will begin opinion writing and practice expressing opinions and generating reasons for them.

Reading: This week, we will continue to work on encoding and decoding high frequency words. Our phonics focus will also include different vowel pairs (oa, ea, ee, ui, ie) → The first vowel is long (says it’s name) and the second vowel in the pair is silent. We will also work on our fluency each day in our decodable reader and in our small group reading groups. We will finish our first books during guided reading, and return to nonfiction reading with a new issue of our Super Magazine. 

Social Studies: We are taking a break from social studies as we just finished a Chapter

Religion: This week we will focus our attention to our Baptism. We will review the symbols of Baptism and the meaning of being submerged under the water and coming up from the water. Towards the end of the week, we will receive a visit from Deacon Dan. This is special because he will be the Deacon that will lead the God Parent’s Day service.  

Assessments :

• Spelling Test →  Wednesday, October 6th (Spelling List)

• Reading Test → Wednesday, October 6th (no studying required)

Reminders:

• Please send me a picture of your child reading at home for our Caught Reading bulletin board. (The students are so excited about this!!) 

• Please try to take your child to Mass over the weekend. This is especially important as we start to prepare for First Reconciliation and First Communion this year.

• Socktober→ throughout the month of October, St. Joes is collecting donations of socks for various charities. 

• Godparent’s Day Baptismal Service → Friday, October 15th, from 12:15-1:00pm. This service is for Godparents (or the Godparents’ substitutes) and your children only. 
• Health Forms are due Friday, October 15th.
• SJCS is required by the State of Illinois and The Archdiocese of Chicago to maintain health records for every student. Below is a summary of the requirements by grade level and all forms are due no later than October 15th. Failure to submit the required health information by this date will result in exclusion from school until the forms are received.
• Please contact Mrs. Wegener ([email protected]) with any questions.