Every week your child will read an anchor text as well as a paired text. The anchor text is used to work on fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary skills and strategies. The paired text may be similar in theme and or genre. This text will reinforce vocabulary usage. Student understanding of the anchor text and vocabulary will be assessed on Fridays.

Students will also work on grammar and spelling throughout the week. Assigned spelling words will be assessed on Fridays.

Social Studies

Congratulations to Liam, Allan, Greyson, Milo, Devynn, Bentley, Kaylyn, Lia, Cece, Katie, Rosalee, Jackson, Owen, Charles, and Alejandro for scoring 100% on their Chapter 3 Social Studies Test! Very Impressive!

Science

Last week your child learned about how people used selection to change an animal’s traits, such as creating new breeds of dogs. This week we saw how selection isn’t always caused by human beings: sometimes other, non-human factors can cause selection to happen.

In our lesson, we introduced the true story of two lizard species in Florida. (If you’re curious, you can read an adult-level version of the story here: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-evolution-green-brown-lizards-20141101-story.html)

The change in these lizards is an example of “natural selection”— a big idea that your child will revisit over the course of their science education. In our lesson we did not use the term “natural selection,” but this example laid the foundation for later understanding of the concept.