Hello all!
Can you believe we have finished out January! We are almost halfway through our year together and thanks to all of our social distancing, handwashing and sanitizing we have remained together in our hybrid model. Thank you all for your efforts! I keep telling the kids to remain vigilant so we can look forward to full time together some time this SPRING! Nothing would make me happier! I have to say, for all the craziness this year has sent us, these kiddos continue to amaze me with their positive attitudes and daily smiles. It is not easy, but they are pushing through! I am so proud of the efforts and progress so far and can't wait to continue to watch them grow. This week, in reading we began looking at the Non-Fiction Signposts. We analyzed Contrasts & Contradictions as well as Extreme & Absolute Language. We read some non-fiction articles and asked ourselves, why did the author use specific language, what does it tell us about the author's purpose? Some great discussions were held, and I can wait to continue our work next week with Numbers & Stats as well as Quoted Words. We also spent some time this week on some grammar review. We worked and will continue to work on common and proper nouns and are focusing on remembering their rules of capitalization in our daily writing. Additionally, we had some fun looking at some homophones that we constantly misuse in our writing : There, Their & They're, Your & You're, and It's and Its. Next week we will look at many others, but again, our focus is to see the translation in their writing. In Math, this week we spent a lot of our time working on equivalent fractions as we then began to add and subtract fractions with unlike denominators. We explored with Fraction Bars to see how we could build equivalent fractions in many ways. We also used the bars to show how we subtract mixed numbers. I loved watching them problem-solve! Next week will continue our work adding and subtracting mixed numbers. Students did a great job illustrating fast and slow processes that change the Earth's surface! Next week we will be starting our Unit on the Earth, Moon & Stars focusing on the apparent brightness of the Sun and stars and also review the Moon Phases. In reading, students have been very engaged in our discussions of both The Fighting Ground and Prairie Lotus. I love hearing them make connections to previous things learned as well as to previous characters from books we have read together this year. Their predictions along the way have also shown they are using what they have read to better shape their predictions. Nice to see this progress! I hope you all enjoy a wonderful, long weekend! Friday folders came home on Thursday, comments are on their pinks sheets for your review. Please return on Monday. As always, thank you for all of your patience and support as we continue to work together to give these kids the best experience we can! Important Dates to Remember:
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Happy Friday all !
This week in Science we took a deep dive into the processes that change the Earth's surface and students are now working on a project which illustrates 16 different processes. Students will label each as either a fast or slow process and draw colorful depictions of each. They did a nice job all week as we took a look at the different types of weathering and how we impact some of this! In Math, we worked on our skills of finding fractions on number lines. Students are doing well with fractions between 0 and 1, but many are still challenged if they have to find a number ,for example 1 7/8 on a number line that is labeled from 0 to 2. We will be continuing to review this as we move forward next week with a look at equivalent fractions. In ELA we worked hard all week on skills for reading Non Fiction. We were asking questions like, "What surprised me?" and " What did the author think I already knew?" Next week we will look at "What challenged my thinking?" We have been reading some non-fiction articles together, pulling apart vocabulary and other questions as we work through these strategies. Next week we will also begin looking at the Nonfiction Signpost! This week we also started our work on answering open response questions. We introduced the ACE strategy - Answer, Cite, Explain and will be taking a closer look and editing recent responses as we implement this strategy. Next week we will be working on our drafts of our feature articles as well! Lots of great reading, writing and discussions happening in our class! On Monday I will be sending home Valentine Hearts for our yearly classroom Kindness Hearts Valentine Exchange. Students will be asked to write a note of kindness to every member of our class and bring them to school no later than Tuesday, February 9th, so they can be quarantined before we exchange them on Friday, Feb. 12th. We will be discussing examples, and why we use this opportunity to spread some kindness in our class on Monday. I will send home oaktag hearts to be cut out along with a class list and instructions on Monday! This activity may replace commercial Valentines. If you decide to purchase Valentine cards everyone in the class needs to be included, and they need to be brought in by February 9th as well. Please DO NOT send any type of candy to school. IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER
Have a fabulous weekend! Maura Happy Friday and Happy long weekend ALL!
I cannot believe we are already halfway through January!! The time is flying but lots to celebrate this week in room 15! In Math we are crushing fractions with our work in Google Slides using models to show mixed and improper fractions! Students have been doing a great job converting from Mixed to Improper and Improper to Mixed. Next week we will be working on plotting fractions on a numberline, an area that lots of students initially find challenging, but I am sure this crew will conquer it with confidence! Oh my am I so overwhelmed with pride on the work students did on their Social Studies projects! The Three Branches of Government projects are clear, colorful and full of great learnings! Well done! We will be continuing to work on our Role in our Government and how we, as citizens can help make our community stronger! In Science, we finished our work discussing the distribution of water on Earth. Students were initially surprised to learn that only 2.5% of the water supply on Earth is FRESH! We discussed not only the sources of fresh water on Earth, but the accessibility of each source. Be sure to ask your kids about this! Next week we will be reviewing the impact of Weather and Climate on the Earth. How does climate and major weather events change the Earth's surface. A project to review both SLOW and FAST processes that impact the Earth will be coming! In writing, we have begun to look at Feature Articles. Now that we have done a great deal of work with Non Fiction text structures, we will be writing a feature article about a topic we feel confident about! I can't wait to see their work on this! Along with our feature article writing, next week we will be focusing on Sign Posts in Non-Fiction writing. Just as we did with fiction, we will learn about different signposts authors use to have readers take notice and note! In reading, we have been working on open response using evidence from texts. We read an article about Drummer Boy's in the Civil War and wrote essays about how bravery was shown by the Drummer Boys. Next week we will be peeling back the layers of a good open response, using a strategy called A.C.E - Answer, Cite, Explain! I am looking forward to bringing their writing to the next level. We are also deep into The Fighting Ground, with Jonathan now helping out a young child left without his parents ,but still a prisoner of the Hessians. Next week is full of excitement as Jonathan needs to decide whether to try to escape or not and what to do with the boy! It's very important students keep up with their daily reading as we don't want to be giving away important events during our class discussions to those who haven't completed assignments. In Prairie Lotus, students read this week about how Hannah, a Chinese American girl living on the prairie is being treated by the community members in her new neighborhood. Some great discussions about acceptance of difference have been taking place and we were able to make connections to Martin Luther King Jr's dream as well. I guess the highlight of the week was our visit with Chad Morris and Shelley Brown, authors of Mustaches for Maddie. You know it's a good day when you are virtually teaching and see every hand to ask questions of our special guests. It also made me smile to see them all in their mustaches when the stories main character, Maddie, joined us for a few moments at the end! I have used my class Amazon card to order more of their books as numerous students were excited to read more.. (What more could a teacher ask for!) As always, thanks for what you all do to support your child, our classroom and me each and every day! Enjoy the LONG weekend! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy New Year and Happy Friday everyone!
We had a GREAT first week back! Students hit the ground running and it was so great to see them rested and ready to start the New Year strong! This week in Math we finished up our work on volume of rectangular prisms. We looked at regular and irregular prisms and how we could break shapes apart to make them easier to calculate. Next week we begin our study of FRACTIONS! We will begin with a short review then delve into adding fractions with LIKE denominators. Fractions are always a challenging area for some, so continued work on MATH FACT FLUENCY is key! I will post a link to a math fact fluency game on Schoology that students can access to review math facts at anytime! Keep up the great work! In Reading, we are working on non-fiction text features and have been working on a scavenger hunt in class. Students are adding pictures of different text features to a Google slide show presentation which gives them a feature with the definition, then students go on the hunt! They have been doing a great job with this, so nice to see them helping classmates by letting each other know good resources they used to find information. We will be beginning our work on the Sign Posts for Non Fiction next week to go along with this work! Additionally, we are tying this to our next writing focus which will be a FEATURE Article. Once we feel comfortable with all of these text features, we will choose subjects we know a lot about and create feature articles using many of the different text features to present our knowledge! I can't wait to see what the students come up with. In Science, we had some fun this week as we tied in our study of the Earth's systems to a look at the 4 layers of the Earth and built models together using model magic. Be sure to check out our photo gallery and ask your child to tell you about the layers of the Earth. Today students were able to cut their models in half to show the layers we built together and then took pictures and created a few Google Slides to present their knowledge. Well done! Next week we will be focusing on the Distribution of water on Earth! In Social Studies, we had an amazing google meeting on Wednesday as I separated the boys and girls into different break out rooms and had students go line by line with the Preamble to the Constitution. I had no idea at the time, how much this activity would connect to world events! I was so impressed by the students discussions as they tried to understand what "promote general welfare" or "ensure domestic tranquility" meant. The newly written versions they came up with were wonderful and will be signed by all next week! I will share a copy with you by posting a picture in our gallery. Beginning Monday, we will start looking at the Bill of Rights and will ask ourselves which of the first ten amendments do we individually think is the most important. We will be writing about this and discussing as a class, I cannot wait for this! Students are also working on a poster that is due NEXT FRIDAY, Jan 15th which illustrates the 3 branches of government and how checks and balances are in place. I'm excited to share I was able to get another author to meet with us via Google Meet! This one is free, so I was able to book for next Wednesday afternoon at 1:30pm. Chad Morris author of Mustaches for Maddie will spend some time with us answering some questions and telling us more about his life as an author and more about the background of this special book! This will be a meeting for just my class to attend on Wednesday, as we just finished this book! I have met Shelley Brown, his wife and co-author and Maddie (the main character)in the past, and it was an amazing conversation. I am hoping by bringing these live visits, the kids' excitement for reading continues to grow! As always, thank you for EVERYTHING you do to support our class. Over break, I was able to buy numerous new titles for our classroom library, and even got Chad Morris and Shelley Brown's new book (which a student is already devouring), thank you again for the generous Amazon gift card which allowed me to do so! After all of our activities before Christmas and the past few weeks, we are very low on sandwich size Ziploc bags if you are able to send in any for our classroom supplies. Thank you in advance for your continued generosity! Have a fabulous weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember
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