5/11/18 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Mark your calendars- We will be having our Pioneer Day on Thursday, May 24th.  Please see the schedule for the day below.  An email was sent to you with additional documents and details about this exciting day.  We also need parent volunteers and donations.  Please click on this VOLUNTEER/DONATION link if you are able to help.  Thank you so much for your support in making this a fun and exciting day!

 

• GREENFIELD VILLAGE FIELD TRIP is Thursday, May 31st!  Your child will need to wear comfortable clothes/shoes and pack a brown bag lunch for the day!
• We are excited to be "Ending our Year with a BANG!"  Each balloon has a student's name inside and each day we pop one and celebrate that special student for the day.  The kiddos are so excited each morning to pop a balloon! 

Math:

Starting Monday, May 14th your child will NOT have Math homework. 


Social Studies:
We have begun to study for our Unit 3 assessment.  Look for study guides to come home next week as well as the date of the assessment.  


Science:
Students have been recording changes over the past week of their seeds and were surprised to see small sprouts, very curious about the seed coats, and now fascinated by the tiny leaves growing.  From this experiment, we will explore the idea of a hydroponic (growing plants in water) garden to observe the life cycle of a bean plant.

Word Study and Grammar:

Reading:
This week we started our final unit where we are learning all about the elements of a MYSTERY. The students are reading a Cam Jansen mystery with their book clubs.   They are learning about how the author develops the characters to leave you guessing.  They are also learning about how to determine the clues in the story as well as foreshadowing.  This is a fun unit and the students are really enjoying their Mysteries.

Writing:

We also started our final writing unit on Fairy Tales.  The students will be writing their own adaptation of a popular Fairy Tale of their choice.  This week we have been reading a lot of Fairy Tales along with an adaptation of that Fairy Tale and then comparing and contrasting them.   They are also using these stories as Mentor Texts to help them with their own writing.  They can't wait to get started on writing their own adaptive Fairy Tale.

5/1//2018 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

 

• We can't believe the month of May is already here!  It is also finally starting to feel like spring outside.  
• M-STEP testing is this week.  Today the students took the Math portion and tomorrow and Wednesday they will be taking the ELA (Reading and Writing) portion of the test.  It's important for the students to get a good night sleep, eat a good breakfast and just do their very best.  We are very proud of how hard they worked on it today.
• GREENFIELD VILLAGE FIELD TRIP is Thursday, May 31st!  Please return the signed permission slip and $18 by tomorrow, May 1.  
• Mark your calendars- We will be having our Pioneer Day on Thursday, May 24th.  As we finalize the schedule for the day, we will send it out to you.  This should be a fun and exciting day!

Math:

We have just begun Unit 7.  In Unit 7, students will revisit volume measurement and focus on comparing, estimating, and measuring liquid volumes.  We will continue to develop an understanding of fractions as numbers by exploring fractions as representations of distances on a number line.  


Social Studies:
In Social Studies, students had fun creating a colorful timeline of Michigan's Road to Statehood.  Our lessons will tie nicely into this visual map as we learn what factors influenced people to move to Michigan.  


Science:
Thank you for sending in all the fruits and vegetables for our seed hunt.  Once students opened the fruit and vegetables and located seeds, they then examined and sorted the seeds based on different properties.  Next, students were given a selection of seeds - bean, pea, sunflower and corn for an investigation of the effect of water on the seeds by setting up seed sprouters and observing and recording changes over a week.  Below are pictures of students looking at our classroom sprouter and a picture of their individual sprouters they created. 

Word Study and Grammar:

There will not be a grammar packet this week due to M-STEP testing.

Reading: 

The students did a great job on their Research Club Text Structure poster projects.  Each group worked so well together to take notes on all five text structures (cause/effect, description, problem/solution, compare/contrast, and sequence), and then they turned those notes into complete paragraphs.  Each group also presented their poster to the class.

Next in reading, we will start our final unit for the year where the students will be reading and learning all about Mysteries.  This should be a really fun and exciting unit for them!  We will be closely examining the different elements of a mystery and the students will be reading a variety of Mysteries in their Book Clubs.

Writing:

The students are finishing up their final Opinion writing piece on the life of a Pioneer child vs. the life of a Native American child. Each student will dress up as one (Pioneer or Native American) for our Pioneer Day on Thursday, May 24.

We will also be starting our final writing unit of the school year where the students will be writing their own adaptations of popular Fairy Tales.  This also should be a fun writing unit for the students!