I hope you enjoyed the long holiday weekend with your family! We are still full steam ahead in our Wonders reading program. This week in the Wonders reading program we answer the question, “What can myths teach us?” The students loved our work with myths when we explored them in our folk tale unity, so I am sure they will be excited! We will practice identifying the theme in a story, focusing on the moral or lesson. As well, we will review similes. Our spelling pattern this week will be open and closed syllables. In Math next week we will wrap up our work with arrays. The students are making great progress with this skill. I continue to remind students that arrays are equal groups, represented by pictures, lines, x's or other objects.....but the key is that the groups must be equal. We will take the end of unit 8 math assessment on Thursday and Friday. As well, we will begin to work on our final research project. Students will have the chance to pick a biome they are interested in. The students will conduct research, write and informational piece, and design their own blog. We continue our focus on plants this week, as we grow grass heads! The students are learning that plant stems move to find sunlight and will grow a grass head (think chia pet) that has hair going in a direction of their choosing. The key is that they must apply their understanding of the plant/sunlight relationship to be successful!
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Thank you for joining us at Open House. The students were so proud to share their hard work, you could see the pride shine through.
We will move on from our folk tale unit this week. We will jump back into Wonders as we explore the question; Why is teamwork important? As we read, I am looking to see that students can now summarize a story independently by pulling out key details as they read. Our spelling pattern this week with focus on consonant-le words, and there will be a spelling test this week! We will shift our focus this week to explore dividing shapes into equal groups, looking at arrays (rows of the same number of objects), and equal groups. This work is very important as it lays the foundation for multiplicative reasoning (including multiplication and division). Some students my struggle with the visual-spatial reasoning that is required for these tasks, Feel free to help them along if they are struggling. Great tasks to improve this skill are puzzles and origami-both help improve visual-spatial reasoning. We will continue with our learning about plants this week, continuing to explore the needs of plants. We will rework our mystery from last week; Do trees eat dirt? Our seeds went astray this week and we will need to redo this experiment! Upcoming dates: Thursday, May 24th: Community Meeting Friday, May 25th: Squam Lake permission slips due Thursday, June 7th: Field Trip to Squam Lake We had busy week preparing for Open House. We look forward to seeing you on Thursday at 5:30 for our student showcase. You will have a chance to see in-class projects, as well as our Artist in Residence work.
We will continue to work on folk tales this week. We are wrapping up our study with tall tales. We will learn about Paul Bunyan and John Henry. Our spelling pattern this week with focus on consonant-le words. We continue to focus on geometric ideas this week. We will look more closely at quadrilaterals, and work on applying our knowledge as we solve a mathematical problem about building a garden. As well, students will be introduced to partitioning (dividing) shapes in to even groups. We will continue with our learning about plants this week, moving beyond seeds to explore the needs of plants. They will work through a mystery that asks; Do trees eat dirt? At the same time, students are continuing researching shifting to animal habitats as we work to bring our science learning full circle this year. Upcoming dates: May 17th – R/1/2 Open House 5:30/ Squam Lake permission slips come home We had an amazing week back from break. We were busy building and painting our landform islands, researching plants, and learning how to create digital posters. As well, we worked with our Artist in Residence on Friday, dying cloth for wish flags. We will spend our second day with the Artist tomorrow, Monday May 7th.
We will continue to work on folk tales this week. The students were highly interested in myths that involved the Greek gods. They couldn't believe that people once thought these stories to be true. This week we will learn about fables and legends as we explore classic stories. We will continue with our spelling and grammar work, so look for a spelling list that focuses on magic e syllables. The students did an amazing job on their unit 7 math assessment. We will finish up the last few questions tomorrow before moving on to Unit 8-focusing on geometry. Next week students will learn about shape attributes, or features. We will play a game similar to go fish that helps students build their shape vocabulary. We will begin a new unit on plants this week, learning how seeds can be transported from one location to another. They will work through a mystery that asks, how did that tree get there? At the same time, students are researching plants and their life cycles, habitats, and the products they make . We will have a special guest speaker at the end of the month who will help us learn more about seed transportation. I look forward to meeting with so many of you on Wednesday and Thursday to discuss your child's progress! Let me know if you need to make any changes to your planned conference. Upcoming dates: May 7th- Artist in Residence May 17th – R/1/2 Open House 5:30 |
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