Hi all,
It was great to see you all at our writer's celebration on Friday! The kids were so excited to share their hard work with you all and were happily reading all of their compliments back in our classroom!
Here's what's going on this week:
Tuesday: -strings
-1 o'clock release
Thursday: -Artifacts About Us Activity-- objects due in school (read "Social Studies" section below)
Friday: -homework due
Homework:
Math: Students will play Factor Pairs for homework this week (click here for the online version). I will send home a recording sheet for students to complete and turn in on Friday. If playing online is not an option at home, please let me know and I can send home a set of cards for your child to play with. I will also be introducing a math challenge for students to complete for homework this week if they wish to, but it is totally optional. This challenge will also be due on Friday.
Word Study: Students will review the spellings of words with the long a and long e sounds (ex: crayon, fierce, complain).
Speaking Theater: This week, we will be starting our Opinion Writing unit! As a supplement to this unit, school committee member Bill Hayner will be visiting our classroom on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to run a "speaking theater". During this time, he will be giving the kids some public speaking pointers and time to practice. This was a huge hit with the students last year, and provided everyone the practice needed before hitting the podium at our Mock Town Meeting which will be taking place next month!
Here's what's been going on in our classroom:
Math: We're finishing up our multiplication and division unit early this week. At this point in the year, students should be fluent with all multiplication facts between 1-10. We will continue to review these facts for the remainder of the year. Students should also be able to use known facts to help them solve trickier facts. Here's an example:
"6x9 is a tricky fact but I know that 4x9 =36. I just need to add on two more groups of 9 (18) to 36 to find the product of 6x9, therefore, the product is 54." Visit our Important Information and Extra Practice Page to watch some "Math Words and Ideas" videos to learn more about the math skills and language we've been using this year.
Writing: We're on to Opinion Writing! This week, each student will use a variety of methods to generate speech ideas and eventually will generate a thesis for a speech. We'll start by focusing on things they wish to change or improve in our school and later this week, we will move on to thinking about our town. This has been my favorite unit to teach and I'm so excited to watch the kids produce some awesome pieces this year!
Reading: We will be shifting our focus from Character Studies to poetry! In this unit, we will focus on analyzing dozens of poems to see how poetic devices work and how figurative language can help readers construct different meanings.
Social Studies: We will be saying "so long" to crayfish tomorrow and will jump right in to our next social studies unit: Perspective and Pilgrims! For our first activity, I'm asking each student to bring in one object that represents them in some way. The objects could include a piece of sports equipment, a favorite stuffed animal, a flag, a piece of jewelry, a favorite book, etc. You might want to have a conversation with your child thinking about the reasons why this object represents a part of them. Please help to remind your child to bring these objects to school on Thursday!
That's all for now. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Ms. McLellan
It was great to see you all at our writer's celebration on Friday! The kids were so excited to share their hard work with you all and were happily reading all of their compliments back in our classroom!
Here's what's going on this week:
Tuesday: -strings
-1 o'clock release
Thursday: -Artifacts About Us Activity-- objects due in school (read "Social Studies" section below)
Friday: -homework due
Homework:
Math: Students will play Factor Pairs for homework this week (click here for the online version). I will send home a recording sheet for students to complete and turn in on Friday. If playing online is not an option at home, please let me know and I can send home a set of cards for your child to play with. I will also be introducing a math challenge for students to complete for homework this week if they wish to, but it is totally optional. This challenge will also be due on Friday.
Word Study: Students will review the spellings of words with the long a and long e sounds (ex: crayon, fierce, complain).
Speaking Theater: This week, we will be starting our Opinion Writing unit! As a supplement to this unit, school committee member Bill Hayner will be visiting our classroom on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to run a "speaking theater". During this time, he will be giving the kids some public speaking pointers and time to practice. This was a huge hit with the students last year, and provided everyone the practice needed before hitting the podium at our Mock Town Meeting which will be taking place next month!
Here's what's been going on in our classroom:
Math: We're finishing up our multiplication and division unit early this week. At this point in the year, students should be fluent with all multiplication facts between 1-10. We will continue to review these facts for the remainder of the year. Students should also be able to use known facts to help them solve trickier facts. Here's an example:
"6x9 is a tricky fact but I know that 4x9 =36. I just need to add on two more groups of 9 (18) to 36 to find the product of 6x9, therefore, the product is 54." Visit our Important Information and Extra Practice Page to watch some "Math Words and Ideas" videos to learn more about the math skills and language we've been using this year.
Writing: We're on to Opinion Writing! This week, each student will use a variety of methods to generate speech ideas and eventually will generate a thesis for a speech. We'll start by focusing on things they wish to change or improve in our school and later this week, we will move on to thinking about our town. This has been my favorite unit to teach and I'm so excited to watch the kids produce some awesome pieces this year!
Reading: We will be shifting our focus from Character Studies to poetry! In this unit, we will focus on analyzing dozens of poems to see how poetic devices work and how figurative language can help readers construct different meanings.
Social Studies: We will be saying "so long" to crayfish tomorrow and will jump right in to our next social studies unit: Perspective and Pilgrims! For our first activity, I'm asking each student to bring in one object that represents them in some way. The objects could include a piece of sports equipment, a favorite stuffed animal, a flag, a piece of jewelry, a favorite book, etc. You might want to have a conversation with your child thinking about the reasons why this object represents a part of them. Please help to remind your child to bring these objects to school on Thursday!
That's all for now. Please let me know if you have any questions!
Ms. McLellan