Happy Friday Families!
It was great seeing everyone to discuss your students' academic progress during conferences last week. I loved that I was able to learn more about each student through the conversations we shared! Now that we're already into trimester 2, I am excited to see how much more the students will grow throughout the year. There is so much to teach and so much to learn, but so little time! Please keep the lines of communication open and email me with any questions or concerns!
I hope that everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving break and enjoyed spending time with love ones. As our snow day this week reminded us, winter has fully arrived, and we are quickly heading into the last month of 2018. With that being said, let the countdown to winter break commence!
I hope that everyone had a terrific Thanksgiving break and enjoyed spending time with love ones. As our snow day this week reminded us, winter has fully arrived, and we are quickly heading into the last month of 2018. With that being said, let the countdown to winter break commence!
Here are the targets we will focus on as we work through the beginning of the second grading period:
Literacy
*Our students are wrapping up our shared text, The Road to Freedom. The story is narrated from the point of view of a young girl, Emma, who is traveling on the Underground Railroad with her mother in hopes of making it North to freedom. Our students were highly engaged throughout text and had many great discussions related to topics raised within the story. Our previous social studies unit covered slavery, and the students were able to make cross-curricular connections to help deepen their understanding of slavery and the Civil War era. Using this shared text, we worked on literacy skills such as summarizing and identifying narrator's point of view.
Please check in with your student periodically about his/her usage time on our Successmaker program. In order to "stay in the green" students need to complete about three twenty-minutes session per week. Although we sometimes have an opportunity to spend some time on it at school, those students who are consistently meeting their weekly goals are also using it at home as well. Students can use this time towards their at home reading log minutes.
Writing
*We are currently using The Road to Freedom as a springboard for various writing samples. We have practiced writing short-constructed responses, and we are currently planning and writing an opinion paper based on topics/issues related to slavery from the book.
Math
*We are continuing our unit with decimals, which include writing, comparing, rounding, adding, and subtracting decimals. Recently, we started working on converting within powers of ten using the metric system and real life examples such as technology storage (gigabytes, megabytes, kilobytes). As the students explore powers of ten, they are also solidifying their conceptual understanding of shifting place values when multiplying and dividing by tens. We will be having a unit test to cover all of the topics in decimals we have learned next Friday.
Social Studies
*Last trimester, we closed off our unit about slavery and how it affected the growth of Colonial America. We will be diving into government/civics in the upcoming weeks, and our students will start to dig deeper into the concepts of patriotism.
Science
*We recently started learning about earth systems in science. The unit discusses the four main systems of Earth: the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. In addition to learning about their attributes and characteristics, we are also identifying interactions that occur between the systems. This week we've been focused on learning about how the earth systems interact to produce weather.
Upcoming Events
December 4 (Tuesday): Math MAP (in morning)
December 5 (Wednesday): Reading MAP (in afternoon)
Literacy
*Our students are wrapping up our shared text, The Road to Freedom. The story is narrated from the point of view of a young girl, Emma, who is traveling on the Underground Railroad with her mother in hopes of making it North to freedom. Our students were highly engaged throughout text and had many great discussions related to topics raised within the story. Our previous social studies unit covered slavery, and the students were able to make cross-curricular connections to help deepen their understanding of slavery and the Civil War era. Using this shared text, we worked on literacy skills such as summarizing and identifying narrator's point of view.
Please check in with your student periodically about his/her usage time on our Successmaker program. In order to "stay in the green" students need to complete about three twenty-minutes session per week. Although we sometimes have an opportunity to spend some time on it at school, those students who are consistently meeting their weekly goals are also using it at home as well. Students can use this time towards their at home reading log minutes.
Writing
*We are currently using The Road to Freedom as a springboard for various writing samples. We have practiced writing short-constructed responses, and we are currently planning and writing an opinion paper based on topics/issues related to slavery from the book.
Math
*We are continuing our unit with decimals, which include writing, comparing, rounding, adding, and subtracting decimals. Recently, we started working on converting within powers of ten using the metric system and real life examples such as technology storage (gigabytes, megabytes, kilobytes). As the students explore powers of ten, they are also solidifying their conceptual understanding of shifting place values when multiplying and dividing by tens. We will be having a unit test to cover all of the topics in decimals we have learned next Friday.
Social Studies
*Last trimester, we closed off our unit about slavery and how it affected the growth of Colonial America. We will be diving into government/civics in the upcoming weeks, and our students will start to dig deeper into the concepts of patriotism.
Science
*We recently started learning about earth systems in science. The unit discusses the four main systems of Earth: the biosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and geosphere. In addition to learning about their attributes and characteristics, we are also identifying interactions that occur between the systems. This week we've been focused on learning about how the earth systems interact to produce weather.
Upcoming Events
December 4 (Tuesday): Math MAP (in morning)
December 11 (Tuesday): Early Release @ 2:00 PM
December 11 (Tuesday): Special Lunch
December 12 (Wednesday): Lewis and Clark Assembly
December 13 (Thursday): Student Council Field Trip to Belmont Village
December 21 (Friday): Winter Parties @ 1:45 PM
December 22 - January 6: WINTER BREAK
Friendly Reminders
**Please remember to send your child with a healthy snack. Nothing feeds the brain better than something healthy!
**Please continue to have your child practice his or her multiplication facts up to 12.
**If students want to play in the snow outside, they must have the appropriate snow gear in order to do so. Students must be equipped with snow pants, snow boots, jacket, gloves, and hat.
