Friday, November 15, 2019

Happy Friday Families!

I hope everyone is staying warm during this early November Arctic blast!  As we deal with the bitter cold, however our students continue to work hard, wrapping up the grading period.  As we move on to the second grading period, I am excited to see how much more our students will grow!  There is so much to teach and so much to learn, but so little time! 

Here are the targets we will focus on as we work through the beginning of the second grading period:

Literacy

*Our students wrapped up our shared informational text, Rainforest Food Chains.  Next week we will begin reading a book titled The Road to Freedom. This 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.  Using this shared text, we will focus on literacy skills such as summarizing and identifying narrator's point of view. 


Writing
*As we move into Road to Freedom, we will use it as a springboard for various writing samples. We will practice writing short-constructed responses, as well as plan and write an opinion paper based on topics/issues related to slavery from the book.


Math
*We are continuing our unit with decimals, which includes writing, comparing, rounding, adding, and subtracting decimals. We will start to work on converting within powers of ten using the metric system and real life examples such as technology storage (gigabytes, megabytes, kilobytes).  As the students start to explore powers of ten, they will also solidify their conceptual understanding of shifting place values when multiplying and dividing by tens.


Social Studies
*Our students wrapped up our discussions about the various responsibilities and powers of different types of governments.  Our discussions revolved around the pros and cons of a democracy, a parliamentary government, a monarchy, and a dictatorship.  Of the four governments, students had to decide which government uses their powers and responsibilities for the benefit of its citizens.



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 students finished working in groups to produce a video about an assigned Earth system. Together, they researched information, wrote scripts, and produced their videos! Students really seemed to have fun during this learning experience. These will be in the hall for you to enjoy during conferences!


Upcoming Events

November 19 (Tuesday): PTO Special Lunch
November 22 (Friday): Report Cards Released
November 25 (Monday): Early Release - Parent/Teacher Conferences
November 26  (Tuesday): No School - Parent/Teacher Conferences
November 27  (Wednesday): No School - Start of Thanksgiving 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. Please make sure to send your student with snow pants, snow boots, jacket, gloves, and hat. 

Thank you and have a wonderful weekend!

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