Happy Friday all!
Can you believe tomorrow is MAY 1st? We made a fantastic transition from April break , sharing our stories and even writing a bit about our fun! In Math, we continue to work comparing decimals and worked this week on both adding and subtracting decimals. We also took a look at expanded form and place value with decimals and how base ten blocks can be used as models. Next week we will move into multiplying decimals! Great work by all so far! In Reading and Writing this week our focus has been on Poetry. We wrote our own class free verse about 5th grade and then let our creative juices flow to write our own! So impressed by the poets among us! We are looking at the structure of poetry and how we can find ideas everywhere! We also wrote a personal narrative to document our growth since the beginning of the year! I was very impressed to see the amount of dialogue used as well as the vibrant verbs and improvement in transitions! So very proud of these kiddos! We are on the edges of our seats in our reading of Front Desk. So many great discussions based on societal issues the main character, Mia, and her family and friends are facing! Students also did a great job discussing their books in their first literature circles. Gregor the Overlander, The Unteachables and Lunch Money definitely have piqued their interest. I love listening to them question each other and then come up with their plan for reading for the next week! Reminder to think of book groups this summer as they look at summer reading for Middle School. In Social Studies this week we presented our posters on the impact the Westward Movement had on communication and transportation! We learned how it was difficult to hire people to work on the Transcontinental Railroad due to the dangerous conditions and also learned about the National Road, Pony Express, Steam Boat, Steam Locomotive, Erie Canal, and the Telegraph. Be sure to as your child which improvement they felt was the most important to this time period in history. We also looked at the Annexation of Texas. Next week our focus will be on the Oregon Trail. In Science, we continue our work with Ecosystems talking about Abiotic and Biotic factors that impact an ecosystem. We will be looking at Food Chains and how we all get our energy and then be taking a deeper dive into some of the major ecosystems of the world. As part of this deep dive, we will learn about vertebrates and invertebrates with some fun projects to keep our interest high and our creative juices flowing! Thank you to each and EVERY family for finding the time to meet for parent conferences! EVERY family found the time which means the world to me! Nothing makes me happier than having the chance to talk about your child's progress! As always, thanks for your support, our transition back has been seamless because of all of your efforts! Enjoy the weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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Happy Friday everyone and Happy Spring Break!
So proud of the way our class has transitioned back to full in person. We are working hard on remembering to limit the chattiness. I know they are excited to be back with friends, but we have been a little chatty throughout the day and have set a goal in place to earn a fun reward! I know they will settle in after break and we will continue to do great work TOGETHER! In Math, we spent the week looking at decimal place value and comparing decimals. We had some fun at the end of the week playing Jeopardy Math to review reading, writing, comparing and adding decimals. We will be ready to start subtraction after break and then move right into multiplication and division. Keep working on those math facts over break! In reading our focus this week was inferences. These can be tough for some, but students did a great job. We initially started with pictures and discussed what we could INFER from the picture. Then we moved on to sentences and mini paragraphs and continued to use what we know to draw conclusions. We will be continuing our work with inferences and context clues after break. Students have also started their novels for our book clubs. Our first meeting will be after break and kids know the amount of pages they need to have done and ready to discuss. It is always great to hear them discussing great literature so I cannot wait! Our read aloud in class Front Desk by Kelly Yang, is leading us to some great discussions about acceptance of others. Be sure to ask your child what they think will happen to Mia and her family as they continue to deal with the difficult owner, Mr. Yao! In writing, we finished our Opinion essays and will begin our work in Poetry for a few weeks after break before jumping in to a research project on Ecosystems. Speaking of Ecosystems, this week our focus was FOOD CHAINS. We reviewed Producers, Consumers and Decomposers and created our own food chains, realizing we all need the SUN to provide energy to the chain! In Social Studies, we continue our work on Westward Expansion. This week we looked at the Trail of Tears and the Indian Removal Act. Some awesome discussions came from our learnings! We then began digging in to how westward expansion changed our transportation and communication. Students worked with partners to research one topic and will be presenting their posters when we return from break. I love how aware they were during our partner work, to keep their 3 feet. They were so happy to do partner work it was amazing to see! As you can see, we had another busy and productive week! We are heading into our home stretch and I look forward to talking with you all during our conferences the week after break! Thank you for all you continue to do to keep our classroom safe and healthy! Enjoy SPRING BREAK! Cheers Maura Important Dates to Remember Monday, April 19- Friday April 23 - SPRING BREAK Week of April 26-30. Parent Conferences Tuesday, April 27 - Bus Driver Appreciation Day Good morning and Happy Friday all!
We have just about completed our first full week together and accomplished so much! We have been working to build our classroom community and also build our stamina! In reading this week our focus has been on Context Clues. We have discussed using inferences, definitions, examples, antonyms and synonyms (IDEAS) to help us determine meaning of unknown words. We practice our skills during some outdoor learning where we completed some task cards and also by partnering up to read some partner plays and work together to determine meaning. Great to see students moving in the sunshine and helping each other out! We are about one-third of the way through our new read aloud Front Desk. Be sure to ask your child about this wonderful book. It is the story of an immigrant family from China who get a job as a manager of a motel in California. Mia, the young girl, is dealing with many types of adversity as her family struggles to survive and make a living in the United States. Some great conversations have been going on in our class! We also had a book tasting this week and students have chosen a new book for our next literature circle which will begin on Monday! Students will be working together to set reading goals and be ready to discuss their books with their small groups. Some of the titles they chose are: The Unteachables, Gregor the Overlander and Lunch Money. I am looking forward to some great conversations as they get going in these books next week! We are finishing up our opinion writing where we took a stand on recess, school uniforms, or zoos. Students are doing a nice job working to state both the pros and cons of their arguments. After April break we will focus on Poetry for a few weeks and then dig into a research project. We took a break from our look at Producers, Consumers and Decomposers in Science this week and dove into Westward Expansion. We discussed the hardships the early pioneers found as they traveled west and learned about the Louisiana Purchase. We took this work outside and worked in small groups to create detailed maps As we learned about President Thomas Jefferson's role in expanding US territories, we also looked at the travels of Lewis and Clark. Next up is the War of 1812! In Math, we began our work with decimals. We are looking at place value to the thousandths place and did a great deal of work on adding decimals this week. We did some error analysis to help remind us why we need to remember to line up decimals before adding. We had some fun playing Addition Top It, where strategy became a game changer as students worked to either build two addends to find the greatest sum or the smallest. Next week we will continue by introducing subtraction and also looking at comparing decimals. Great work by all! Students should be working on their March Madness projects. All have told me what project they chose and that is their afterschool work until break. Many of mentioned they won't be here on Friday, they know their project is due BEFORE they leave for break! Parent conference sign-ups were sent out by Mrs. Burns and I have almost everyone signed up! If the times I provided don't work for you, please email me so we can work to find a convenient time to discuss your child's progress! Here is the link just in case www.signupgenius.com/go/8050D4DA9AF2BA7F58-spring This week we also spent some time designing cards for Mrs. Benner to thank her for all that she does for all of us each day! It is Asst Principal Appreciation Week and we wanted her to know how much we appreciate her! We also spent some time talking about MINDSET. The power of YET, no more saying I can't do this.. we say I can't do it YET.. it is a process for all of us to do hard things and as a class we will continue to focus on this, working together to make progress! Enjoy this beautiful weather, and thank you for all the support as we have come back together as a FULL class! Cheers Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday, Happy Full In Person!
WOW! What a week! So excited to be back full in person! Overall, students did a fabulous job transitioning. We are, as a class, working on remembering to use quiet, inside voices as our excitement to see each other this week, led to some rowdy times in our classroom! Now that we have our first few days under our belt, we are looking to settle in and finish the year STRONG! We just finished our month-long look at story elements in some awesome picture books and celebrated throughout the month with so many guest readers it was incredible. This week we were fortunate to have Mr. Dobbins join us to read a chapter from Where the Red Fern Grows. I can't thank you all enough for sharing your love of reading with our class! Our new schedule, definitely allows for some movement with our snack/mask breaks at 10:20AM followed by specialists at 10:45AM. Lunch is later than we are used to, at 1:20pm but students are remembering to bring in a snack to have at our 10:30AM mask break and that helps a great deal! Remember absolutely no eating food in the classroom, so rain or shine we will head out for that 10:30AM time period to grab a quick snack to keep our bodies fueled! We take our second mask break at 2:20PM before we wrap up our days together. We had lots of fun starting to build our classroom community this week. Please check out the photo gallery as many pictures of our first day and activities throughout our first week were posted. We had our first STEM challenge, which ended in a shoot out ! Congratulations James Bass for sinking the free throw for the win! Maia Crichton, Katherine Hotarek and Gabby Sousa were our runner-ups! Good job done by all! While building our basketball catapults, we also learned about the history of the Final Four, the history of basketball and even became cartoon artists of a basketball player. We spent some of our outdoor learning time looking at basketball excerpts which contained new vocabulary and used context clues to figure out definitions and use in new sentences. Today we even looked at some social media posts by some famous basketball players. It was our job to find the mistakes made #findthemistakes! We are working to become better self editors for punctuation and spelling! Today, we celebrated Idiom Day! Be sure to check out the gallery to see the creativity that was alive in our classroom! BRAVO! All in all, it was a fantastic return to full in person. I couldn't be prouder of how far these kids have come and look forward to even more great things together as a united class! As I continue to remind them, staying together is dependent on us all continuing to be vigilant with our mask wearing and handwashing. With the good weather coming we will get outside more often, but still need to be socially distant. The 3 feet is definitely challenging many, so we will continue working on this! As always, I cannot thank you all enough, for the kind words of support throughout our year together. It was great to see all the kids so happy upon their return and to see them forging new friendships without classroom community! Enjoy the extended weekend with your families! I cannot wait for our first full week of in person learning next week! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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