Weekly Updates and Reminders:
- Our FIELD TRIP to our State Capitol and Michigan Museum is tomorrow- FEBRUARY 14th! Make sure your child has a brown bag lunch (everything must be disposable) and dressed for winter. We will be walking from the Capitol to the Museum!
- Remember to send snow pants, hats, gloves and boots with your child each day.
- You may have heard, but I had the unique opportunity to attend this year's Groundhog's Event in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. As an educator, this was indeed a fun experience to have and share with students for many years to come.
Math:
Unit 4 Assessments have been graded and sent home with your child. There also seems to be some confusion on what needs to be returned to school. The ONLY thing I need back is the actual assessment. You may keep the cover letter and Summary of Skills page. This week we began Unit 5/Fractions and Multiplication Strategies. In Unit 5, students relate their part-whole understanding of fractions to visual and symbolic representations including standard notation and begin to explore fraction equivalencies. They also develop multiplication fact strategies by working from their understanding of multiplication and know facts to find unfamiliar products using arrays, area model and properties of multiplication.
Social Studies:
We have begun a new unit in Social Studies as well...Michigan History! We began the unit by defining and exploring what it means to be a historian. Just like Science, we develop an understanding by looking at cause-and-effect
relationships. For example, this week we examined several primary and secondary sources about Waterford, Michigan. Students looked at old maps, photographs and historical fiction stories to piece together what the history was from this time period. This lesson is a spring board for the unit's upcoming lessons, wherein we learn about the Native Americans and Pioneers. Our upcoming field trip will support this learning in so many ways!
Social Studies:
We have begun a new unit in Social Studies as well...Michigan History! We began the unit by defining and exploring what it means to be a historian. Just like Science, we develop an understanding by looking at cause-and-effect
relationships. For example, this week we examined several primary and secondary sources about Waterford, Michigan. Students looked at old maps, photographs and historical fiction stories to piece together what the history was from this time period. This lesson is a spring board for the unit's upcoming lessons, wherein we learn about the Native Americans and Pioneers. Our upcoming field trip will support this learning in so many ways!
Science:
This week in science, we continued to understand patterns of motion by experimenting with making tops from plastic disks and shafts! OH WHAT FUN we had! We discussed cause-and-effect relationships to the goal. i.e., if you want to a top to spin for a long time, you need a fairly heavy mass near the bottom of the shaft and a means for getting the system rotating really fast. Students learned tops exhibit a rotational motion when torque is applied to the axial shaft; variables affect top performance.
Word Study and Grammar:
Word Study and Grammar:
Writing:
We are finalizing the publishing of our non-fiction minibooks. The students have done a nice job of applying the many writing skills that we have learned- organizing notes into sections with headings, bolding important words and creating a glossary, adding pictures and captions, including topic and closing sentences in each section, and much more! I am very proud of their hard work in writing. This week, the students are completing a fun poster of their topic to show how non-fiction topics can be displayed in a lot of different ways. Next week we will start our next unit on Opinion Writing.
Reading:
Two students have already earned all 9 BADGES for the "Room 303 Reading Challenge!" Congrats to Emma and Colin! We will be celebrating with a pizza lunch and a slurpee.
Most of the students should be about half way through their badges at this point. The students have been excited about the Reading Challenge and are doing a great job!
This week we are focusing on non-fiction text and how authors use the different structures to help us make meaning of what we are reading. These structures we are examining are cause-effect, problem-solution, sequence, compare-contrast, and description. We are also looking at examples of test taking language used in many informational articles.
Most of the students should be about half way through their badges at this point. The students have been excited about the Reading Challenge and are doing a great job!
This week we are focusing on non-fiction text and how authors use the different structures to help us make meaning of what we are reading. These structures we are examining are cause-effect, problem-solution, sequence, compare-contrast, and description. We are also looking at examples of test taking language used in many informational articles.
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