Week of December 7th

 Hi there!

Students do not have school this Friday, December 11th!

Please talk with your student whenever you have a moment, reiterating how important it is to wear our masks during the school day (over our mouth AND nose). I've been having to give more reminders lately. 

Thank you to all of you donated dry erase markers to the classroom! I really appreciate it!!

Upcoming Events:

December 11th: No School

December 15th: Pajama Day!

December 15th: Virtual Family Night (6pm - 7pm)

Curriculum Update:

Reading: We began reading books in partnerships and book clubs this week! We spent the first half reading picture books and by Thursday we began our chapter books with our partners. Reading with a partner/group works really well for most of our students. It holds them accountable, and helps them aim towards a reading goal. We will start recording and assessing our book club conversations this week allowing us to be more reflective and to grow and set goals for ourselves.

We also talked about character traits this week and how we can "level up" our word choice when discussing, writing, and sharing about our characters we read about. This will help us in both reading and writing. We created paint strip-like slips to really reflect on the difference a word can make to be more accurate to who we are talking about. Here are some examples before they were colored:

Writing: We are writing essays about the books we read. We've spent the week discovering what makes a good thesis statement. We then chose our statement and have been rereading our book and looking at it with different 'lenses' to find strong, supportive evidence and reasons.

Math: We will continue with division and learning how to divide into equal groups. By now, every student has chosen a division strategy that works for them. When teaching all the strategies, we decided to make them more personal and rename them. So if you hear "Rollercoaster Tracks", "Three Gifts Under a Tree", "Divi-traction", and "Number Power" method, just know that those are our names for them. Throughout the week I will send division worksheets and games home. I encourage you to play those games with your child, especially if you are noticing they are struggling. More practice at home will help them! I will continue to pull students for seminars each day to give them more individualized help and practice.

Word Study: We are still working through Unit 5. The Unit 5 Week 2 practice packet came home last week. These are not required, but highly encouraged. Students who do these packets tend to do very well on the unit tests. This unit focuses on working with words that have a vowel sound that doesn't say its name. This is called a schwa. If you'd like to learn more about it, you can check out this blog. Unit 5 test will be this week! 

Content: Our current science unit is all about how plants and animals live, grow, and reproduce. Students will soon pick one area to research more in depth and present what they've learned to the class.

Have a great week!

Carly Burris