Happy Friday everyone!
Another great week in Room 15! We continue to work hard on our multiplication facts and multiplying larger numbers, but this week our focus has been on partial quotient division, and today we even saw how we could use the area model to solve division equations. Next week will be more review of division as we work to divide larger numbers by two-digit divisors. Keep working on those math facts! In Science this week, students looked deeper at different properties of matter like thermal and electrical conductivity. We looked at ways substances can be identified and how we know substances change. Next week we will continue to look at substances and how they change when acted upon by heat, pressure etc. We will dive into the Law of Conservation of Matter! We also completed a few stem challenges - building paper airplanes with just one sheet of paper and a few paperclips, and then today we finished testing our raft challenge. It looks like the winner was Gabby Sousa - her raft held 29 pennies! Well done!! In Social Studies, we finished up our projects after comparing life in Jamestown and Plymouth. I was very impressed with the posters and Google Slide shows created by all students! Next week we move on to compare the New England, Middle and Southern Colonies. Students will be filling in a grid with some details about the founding, geography, economy and government of each region. In Reading, we have one more signpost to complete on Monday after spending this week digging in to Again and Again. Next week we will finish with Memory moments then kick off our Reading unit on Theme. Today we had our first socially distant book tasting at the "Starbooks Cafe". Students were able to sample from a menu of 6 different realistic fiction titles, listening to audio files of the first few chapters or reading on their own. They wrote down what they thought of each book, whether the author "hooked" them and whether they would want to read the whole book. We will finish our tasting on Monday so I can then gather their information and put them into literature circles to share some of these books together! I can't wait to get them going on these!! Students have really been enjoying our class read aloud The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. This is always a great place to engage students in a discussion. Lots of great characters, which one does your child like the best and why? What do they think will happen next? In writing, we are getting ready to start our first drafts of our Fictional Narratives. We have done a great job pulling apart all of the story elements to really get some great ideas working in our heads! I can't wait to see what students come up with! Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important dates to remember:
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Happy Friday!
Another busy week in Room 15! This week we continued our focus on multi-digit multiplication with the standard algorithm. Students worked with larger numbers (3 digit x 3 digit and 4 digit x 2 digit) and used the Area model to check their work! Very proud of their effort. Keep up daily work on math facts, as fluency is a key to confidence when working with these larger numbers! We learned about Tough Questions and Words of the Wiser this week! Students are continuing to look for these fiction signposts in their independent reading as well as in our class read aloud The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise! Next week we will finish up our work with the last two signposts; "Memory Moments" and "Again and Again". I have been pleased with the work they have been doing to make these connections in their reading. After finishing up the signposts we will be focusing on THEMES and will be starting our first literature cirlces! More information coming soon! In writing, this week our focus was on analyzing characters and working on brainstorming possible problems/conflicts their characters might have in their fictional narratives. Next week, we continue to dig in as we develop the characters we want to have in our stories and then take a dive into interesting settings! I have been please with student work and also know we have some work to do! Transitions and stronger vocabulary will be a focus when we begin writing our own fictional narratives. In Science this week we focused on properties of matter. We searched for items at home and noted their properties. No longer do we look at just color and shape, but we think of the weight, magnetism, solubility as well as many other properties when we compare matter. Next week we will begin looking at chemical and physical changes to matter! In Social Studies, we began our look at Early Colonization, specifically Roanoke, Jamestown and Plymouth. Students are working on taking notes about these colonies from information in our textbook as well as watching a Discovery Education video with facts about Jamestown and Plymouth. They all have a project due OCTOBER 30th - either a posterboard to entice people to move to either Jamestown or Plymouth OR a google slide show. The one requirement if they choose to do a Google Slide show is that they must have an original drawing as part of their slides, they cannot simply post numerous pictures they find through a google search etc. They all now know how to create something, take a picture and upload it, so I am confident they will rise to the occasion with this task! I sent home a copy of the slide show and the rubric for their assignment to this week's email. Thank you all for taking the time to meet with me during Parent Conferences. It says a lot that I was able to schedule a meeting with EVERY single parent in our room! Thank you for your time and support! Friday folders came home today. There is a comment for you to read, and I ask that you sign that you have seen the work in the folder, you of course, can always reply - but that's not required - just the signature that you have seen the work and my comment! Also in this week's folder is the permission slip for Student Government. They are due back to me by Friday, October 30th. Many have asked me about room supplies. Right now we are starting to run low on Paper towels, hand wipes, Kleenex, and we could use some sandwich size Ziploc bags (you have probably noticed many activities coming home using different size Ziploc). I appreciate any supplies you can provide to our class. Have a wonderful weekend and don't forget to check out the photo gallery! Cheers! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday all
I cannot believe we are already halfway through October! Kids did a great job settling in after an extra long weekend! We studied our second Fiction Sign Post "AHA Moments" - when a character suddenly realizes or understands, or finally figures something out - We should stop and ask ourselves "How might this change things?" We had some fun looking at some Pixar clips as well as reading a short story about a kindergarten boy who was definitely trying to pull a fast on his parents! We also have been making these connections in our independent reading novels and our class read aloud. Love the work we are doing, and the connections we are making! In Writing, we have begun our unit on Fictional Narratives, this week our focus was on Story elements and character analysis. We will dig a little deeper into characters next week and write a short paragraph describing the characters Ellie and Carl after watching and discussing a few clips from "UP". In Math, we did a great job reviewing partial products and the area model and showed our perseverance as we learned to use these strategies to multiply larger numbers like 3 digits x 3 digits and 4 digits by 2 digits. On Friday, we did an initial introduction to the Standard Algorithm (one most parents can definitely connect with a bit more!). We will be doing lots of modeling and practice with this strategy next week, making connections with all three models! In Science, students did a fabulous job with their take-home Solubility lab, silly me forgot to ask them to take a picture of themselves in action! Next time for sure, as their enthusiasm as we discussed this activity really made me miss the days of being able to do this with them in class. I am just so happy we are all finding ways to keep them engaged and excited in Science. More hands-on activities and STEM to come. This week we continue to look at properties and will begin our discussion of physical and chemical changes! As always, I appreciate all of your support! I am proud of the headway they are all making getting comfortable with Schoology! Hoping to get them to move to have fewer papers going home, ideally they would access work from Schoology at home and submit electronically as well. I'd say we are about 50/50 right now! GREAT JOB! Have a wonderful weekend! Looking forward to meeting with each of you next week at parent conferences. You should have received a meeting noticed from me with a Google Meet link. Please note, I have a conference every 20 mins so if you long on before your scheduled time, I most likely will still be in another meeting with the parent before you, but I will be at every conference - I promise!! As always, any questions or concerns, please let me know. Cheers~ Maura Important Dates to Remember:
Happy Friday all!
A short week for us, but one stocked full of great learning together! The weather did cooperate most of the week so we could enjoy outdoor learning and extended time with our masks off - 6 feet apart! This week we dug in the Fiction Sign Posts which are different strategies to use while reading, things to "Notice and Note"! The first signpost we tackled was "Contrasts and Contradictions". We looked at some picture books and short animated films to see how characters sometimes do or say things that should make us, as the read, STOP and notice and note. "Why is the character doing or saying that?" Typically this is something in contrast (or a contradiction) to how we have seen the character act so far. This leads us to question why and can help us make predictions ! As students continue with their own independent reading (20-30 mins each day) they should be looking for contrasts and contradictions, and we will continue to discuss the many we are now noticing in our class read aloud as well! We wrote baseline personal narratives this week. Each student chose a "small moment" to write about. I have been able to review and see individual strengths and weaknesses so I have begun tweaking my upcoming lessons as we launch our Fictional Narrative Unit next week! We have some great story tellers, now we need to hone those skills, to grab our readers' attentions with stronger leads, more descriptive details and proper use of dialogue and punctuation. I cannot wait to see their progress! In Math, our focus this week was place value and exponents with base ten! Students are developing their mathematical language to compare digits within a number. For example, in the number 345,673,876, students are being asked to compare the 3 in the hundred millions place to the 3 in the thousands place. They are pretty solid with being able to figure the place values out, now we are working on the language to use when comparing. For example, the 3 in the hundred millions place is one hundred times GREATER than the 3 in the thousands place. As we move along the place value chart, we need to remember we are either increasing the value by a multiple ten (moving to left) or decreasing value by multiple of 10 (moving to the right). Next week we will be working on connecting two multiplication strategies we have been using (partial products and the area model) to the standard algorithm. We will also start multiplying larger numbers, looking at 3 digit x 3 digit and 4 digit x 2 digit. Daily work on math fact fluency will pay HUGE dividends as we start to work with these larger numbers! Keep uo the great work! In Science, students did a great job creating models of the structure of atoms in a solid, liquid and gas using cheerios. Next week we will be looking deeper at the properties of matter, with an at home activity Wednesday afternoon that will focus on testing SOLUBILITY. I look forward to meeting with all of you to discuss your child's progress so far this year and to set some goals! Be sure to click this link. parent conference sign up Miss Reilly Good afternoon and Happy October everyone!
Another productive week in Room 15. This week we worked to set goals and intentions by choosing our "ONE WORD" that would guide us through the year! I loved listening to students explain why they chose the words they did and how they could use their word to guide their thoughts and actions not only in school, but at home as well! Be sure to ask your child what their chose as their "One Word"! We continued with more practice with multiplication using both partial products and the area model. Students are making connections and realizing that having different strategies gives them the opportunity to check their work! We also started digging in to place value to the billions! Today we had lots of fun playing a multiplication review game using task cards. We reviewed vocabulary such as multiple, factor, product, prime, composite and had some fun doing it! Students were getting into tree poses, scratching their heads and yawning, shouting out "yippee, it's me!" based on the numbers they held and the clues I read. Lots of laughs today! We are working on setting and figuring out the setting from clues in a paragraph or story. Students have been kept on the edge of their seats each day with our class read aloud The Remarkable Journey of Coyote Sunrise. I have loved the connections they have been making! I especially loved that they were pointing out clues that told them this book took place in present day based on cell phones and book titles mentioned in the story! We have some great detectives in this room, using the clues to infer the setting! In writing this week, we have begun working on writing stamina, choosing topics from our heart maps to share stories with classmates. Additionally, we have talked about small moments in our lives and how we want to tell the "seed" part of a story, not the whole watermelon! Next week we will be doing our first narrative sample, we will be able to look back and smile at the progress I KNOW we will make this year! In Science, matter is still our focus. We have gone on a scavenger hunt to find examples at home and today we performed some different activities to prove that solids, liquids and gases have mass and volume! Be sure to ask them how we proved a gas was matter! We started to use FlipGrid this week. Our first time was for me to get some feedback from my class on how they think our Wednesday remote days have gone. They definitely have some opinions which was great to hear. I wanted to check in with them to see what they felt about our online time together as well as the 2.5 hours of remote work they should have done on Wednesday afternoon. We are going to discuss their thoughts and put together a plan for next week's session! As always, thank you for all of your support. Of course, Mother Nature had to throw another wind storm at us on Wednesday, but I was so proud of everyone for how they persevered! Have a wonderful weekend! Maura Important Dates to Remember:
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