Wednesday, October 14th
- Science test over the scientific method (study guides came home Friday, October 9th)
Thursday, October 15th
- Math test over Chapter 2 (study guides will come home soon)
Friday, October 16th
- Half day for students with dismissal at 11:50/End of first quarter
Monday (October 26th) and Wednesday (October 28th)
- Parent teacher conferences- Please sign up for a conference if you haven't done so
In math, we have been studying exponents, prime factorization, estimation, and multiplication. Keep in mind that your child can access the math book online. There are instructions in the blog under Online Textbooks. Also, reviewing your child's nightly math homework can allow you to see the different topics we are learning and how well your child understands the concepts. Students are enjoying math centers. Each week they participate in four different centers. One is the hands on center where they play games and activities that go with current or previous topics. Another is the problem solving center where they solve real life math problems with a partner. ALEKS, which is a computer based program that goes with our math curriculum, is the third center. The last center is a variety of independent activities that reinforce the current topics we are studying. While students are in their centers, I provide small group instruction for the students based on their needs for the lesson.
Below is an example of one type of problem solving activity we have done.
Theme has been our focus in reading. We are examining how the character's problems help us discover the main theme of books. Also, the students have started keeping a reading notebook to record notes about the books they are reading as well as to record how many pages they read each day. After learning a skill or strategy in a mini lesson, students have time to read independently while I meet with groups of students for guided reading. Please encourage your child to bring home the book they are reading in the classroom to read for their homework reading. This way they are finishing more books and not trying to keep up with so many different books. It can become hard for them to manage.
We have come to the conclusion of our personal narrative unit in writing. Students will be having a writing celebration on Tuesday where they can wear their pajamas and bring flashlights. We will read each other's stories by flashlight to make it more exciting! Our next unit is informational writing. If your child has a device that connects to wi-fi and you are comfortable with him or her bringing it to school, this would help since they will all need to be researching. We have access to quite a few laptops and i-pads, but it helps if some students use their personal devices so we can get more kids on at one time.
In science, we are wrapping up our unit on the scientific method. As this is something we use constantly in science, we will be revisiting it throughout each of our upcoming units. Our test over the scientific method will be Wednesday, October 15th. The students have a study guide that is very similar to the test, so please review this with your child. Below are some pictures from our Oreo investigation that we did last week. Sorry they are so blurry! We found that double stuff and regular Oreos sink faster than the golden Oreos!
Thank you all for the support you provide at home! I really enjoy working with each of your children!
