Dear Parents,
I hope you enjoyed some fun times with your family this past weekend and are rested from the extra hour we gained. As we prepare for the new week, I wanted to let you know of exciting learning opportunities taking place in our classroom.
READING - I was so impressed with the creative costumes your children designed as they "walked in the shoes" of their characters last week. On Friday they enjoyed sharing summaries of their books, traits of their characters, and lessons learned by their characters. Students did such a fantastic job digging deeper into their characters' lives, and I am very proud of them. This week we will be focusing on the setting (where and when), as well as the plot (the important events in the story that include the rising action, climax, falling action, and ending) in our stories.
WRITING - Last week we began opinion writing by learning how to state our opinion and support it with three specific, detailed reasons. This week we will be writing a review of a favorite book, and I will introduce a graphic organizer to help students organize their writing. Some of the topics students have enjoyed writing about include opinions of art work, favorite candy bars, and whether recess at school should be increased to 40 minutes and why.
SCIENCE - We are now focusing on the phases of the moon in our "Objects in the Sky" unit. I have been using a read aloud, videos, and visual representations to help students understand the different phases of the moon and why these phases occur each month. Please remind your child to take a look at the moon each night and record the information on their moon calendar. I have also assigned a project which is due November 20th. Your children were very excited about working on the project, so I hope they will enjoy being creative while learning. This week in science students will be learning about the relationship between the sun, earth, and moon as we explore the concepts of rotation and revolution. On Friday, we frosted vanilla wafers with chocolate icing to represent the phases of the moon we have learned about. I will post pictures on the blog soon for you to enjoy.
MATH - We will continue practicing the strategies we have learned to multiply and divide. Some students are struggling with division. It would be helpful if you could incorporate multiplication and division into real life applications at home. For example, pose problems such as "Mom baked 18 cookies. She is going to give an equal amount to the three children in the family. How many cookies does each child receive?" We are also discussing the distributive property of multiplication as a way to decompose or break down facts such as 9 x 7 into (4 x 7) + (5 x 7) to help students more fluently multiply. On Wednesday we will have an assessment on our multiplication and division unit.
REMINDERS - PBIS ASSEMBLY - Friday, November 6 10:15 - 10:45 a.m.
Sincerely,
Ms. Underwood
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