We have reached the one month mark! Where has the time gone! It feels just like yesterday that these little guys were walking into the classroom for the first time. As we began to wrap up our curriculum items, I am planning a lot of fun things for us to do to wrap up our year.
We will begin a read aloud and we will do a small project with it as we close out the year. The book that was originally chosen was Bridge to Terabithia, however, they will read that book in fourth grade with Mrs. Brucatto. So, we will read the runner up book which is A Night Divided. Our field trip will be after their musical as the practice times vary, and it is important that we are at those. We will be going to Brookfield Zoo as we will study ecosystems during that time. I have not told the students where we are going as we will begin a polling activity where they vote and guess where they think we are going. More information will come out about the field trip once the trip has been finalized. Memory Work: On May 7, they will recite verse 2 from Dressing for Battle. "Check to see your plates are tightened, Then in case you're really frightened, They will never notice if you shiver and shout. Even though Goliath's stronger, You can live a little longer If you stay inside the suit and never come out!" Math: We have just two lesson left in topic 14 before we move into reviewing. Since we covered three things; time, volume and mass, we will spend 2-3 days reviewing for the test. I want to make sure that the students enter the test with confidence. They really enjoyed the volume lessons as they were able to conduct experiments with different containers and cups. A lot of them rejoiced at the fact that the activities and homework were fun and easy. Reading: This is an upside down week fo us in reading. We are dedicating a lot of time to our stories as we look to finish them before working on our other writing activites. We are taking our language usage map test tomorrow, so everything is being spread out to accommodate the testing block. Please be sure to have them eat a breakfast in the morning. We are focusing on historical fiction, with the focus being on weather and how it affects us. Theme is another focal point for us, as we continue to practice pulling messages out of the stories we read. In grammar we are focusing on adjectives that compare. These are adjectives that we've learned sporadically throughout the year, but now we are learning the rules for how and when to use them. Important Dates: 5/1: Language Usage Map Test 5/3: Hot lunch @ Concordia 5/7: Math Map test 5/9: Reading Map test
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I hope you all enjoyed your Easter breaks! Today we started something new that will continue to the end of the school year. Each Monday they will select a dojo point goal that they will try to reach by the end of the week. They write out their plan to achieve their goal, and turn in their goal card. Each time a goal is met, they get the amount of their goal when they get their paychecks. Today was a really good day for the most part, because there is a chart in the room that has their goals which reminds them of their plan.
Memory Work: On the 30th, they will recite the first verse from song one, Dressing for Battle, which is in the box underneath Refrain A. "Do not forgot to tie your sandal, Grab a shield and grip the the handle, here is where you strap a pear and hold it to you. Don't forget to buckle up your helmet And to knuckle down and follow all the things that we have told you to do" Math: We are on the last section of time and are preparing to move into the volume section. The volume section should be really fun, as the students will get to interactively measure the volume of objects around the room. That is not something usually done in math, so it would be pretty fun for us all to see how it goes. We will take a small quiz to see if we need to circle back and catch any time errors/gaps. Reading: The essential question for the week is: "How do you decide what is important?" Today we spent some time on that question and we followed it up with how do you decide what is not important. We will continue to revisit those questions and add more to the batch. We are reading myths/dramas/plays this week, so we are focusing on theme again. This should be a breeze for us because we've covered it a lot We are focusing on the comprehension strategy predictions and how sometimes predictions can help lead us to themes. In grammar we are focusing on adjectives and articles and unlike last week, these are a breeze. For writing, the plan is to finish the stories by Wednesday of next week, so May 1. Some friends have made it to the typing stage, and some friends are in the final draft stage. We will make time for this in class, but friends will also bring it home to work on. Science: We have moved into chapter 10, which is focuses on force and motion. We started off learning what motion exactly is. After that we will learn how force affects motions and how they are connected. We will also do an activity where they will examine how mass affects motion. After we learn about motion and force, we will move into gravity and learn how gravity affects motion. There are three small questions that help us answer the big question, so we created a chart that we use to write down important things so that at the end of the chapter we can answer all 4 questions. Important Dates: 4/23: Talent Show rehearsal 4/24: Talent Show rehearsal 4/26: Hot Lunch @ Concordia 4/26: Talent Show! 5/1: Language Usage Map Test 5/3: Hot Lunch @ Concordia The greatest week is upon us! Holy Week! We have chapel everyday this week where hear about the last days of Jesus. In class we are reading Mark 14-Mark 16. They were allowed to pick the "event" they thought was very important and explain why they believe it is important. So far, they have all chosen something different which is great for class discussions.
If you have not already paid for a t-shirt for the musical please do so as soon as possible. The sheet came home in their Tuesday folders (green sheet). Similar to the Christmas Eve program, they have a musical memory sheet (yellow sheet). Each week, the songs will be broken up and they will be given a section of the song to remember. This week, they are focusing on Refrain A of song 1. We will always practice together in class, and while with Mrs. Dennen they will practice pacing and tempo. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to Mrs. Dennen or myself. Religion: We did not wrap up the Joseph unit Friday, so we have placed it on the back burner for now. We have shifted our focus to Holy Week, and Easter. When we return from Easter break, we will pick up where we left off and wrap up the story of Joseph. Math: We closed out topic 13 today. They all finished the test in record time. I do believe today's test was the fastest test they have taken in math. They all chimed in and said it was easy. We went over the answers outside of the explanation questions and they all had good things to say about their scores. I should have them graded by the end of day tomorrow, so if you would like to know their score before the test comes home next Tuesday let me know. :) We are going to move into topic 14, which is on time, capacity and mass problems. We will focus on time to the minute, elapsed time, time word problems, estimating liquid volume, accurately measuring liquid volume, estimating mass, accurately measuring mass, and solving word problems that involve mass and volume. This topic should be fairly simple for them considering all of these things have been covered. We will start the topic off with time. Reading: The essential question for the week is: "What are the different kinds of energy?" Today we spent some time identifying the 10 kinds of energy and discussing how they are used. We also discussed the two forms of energy (kinetic and potential). We read one informational text about solar power and how solar panels are used. As we had a class discussion, I was pleased to hear them using what they had learn at the beginning the lesson. They all had great questions, and provided great feedback. As stated in the last newsletter, since it is almost the end of the year, a lot of the things we are covering in terms of the different genres of text, and comprehension skills, are coming back around. This week we are focusing on expository text, cause-effect, prefixes/suffixes, and homophones. In Grammar we are focusing on pronoun-verb contractions. Monday they struggled with separating regular contractions from pronoun-verb contractions. As we went over them again today, and completed some activities together, they were more confident and no longer struggled. The key for them to remember is that it needs to be a pronoun (she, he, they, your, its). We are also wrapping up our stories and some friends have moved into typing them. These should be completed by the end of next week. Technology: We recently acquired a subscription with Keyboarding Without Tears. The students absolutely adore it. They understand they are learning how to type, and they are learning where the keys are. However, as normal children would, they see it as a game as well. Ever since we started the program they always want to make time throughout the day to type. A few of them have asked me for their log in so they can work on it at home. If it is alright with you, then I will give those who want the login information their codes. Important Dates:
Spring has arrived! We were finally able to get outdoors and feel the sun. The kiddos really have enjoyed being out on the field and running around. In their Tuesday folder is sheet from Mrs. Dennen about their t-shirts. Please fill that out as soon as possible. If you happen to lose it, please let me know and I will get another copy for you. I will also have the document online as well.
Religion: We have been talking about Joseph and his abilities to interpret dreams. We've also discussed what we can learn about God through the life of Joseph. We should wrap up this unit on Friday or Monday of next week. We will then move into our easter unit. Reading: I believe that since it is almost the end of the year, a lot of the things that we've covered are coming back around. This week we are taking another look at author's point of view by examining biographies. Prefixes and suffixes are back, and we will take another look at those and their relation to root words. For grammar we are learning about possessive pronouns, which ties in with our previous lesson on possessive nouns. Everything this week should be fairly simple and straight forward. They did not get a chance to work on their stories last week, so this week they will have an opportunity to wrap them up. Math: We have about 2-3 more lessons in this topic. We took a math quiz today, and they all did pretty good on it. There were some small hiccups, and some confusion, but as we went over it, they understood their mistakes. We will probably take another quiz before the test, as this quiz only covered lessons 13-1 through 13-4. So, the next quiz would cover 13-5 through 13-8. More than likely the quiz will be before they go off for easter break. This chapter is fairly simple for them, as we spent a lot of time with fractions and number lines in topic 12. Science: We moved into chapter 8, which is on matter. It was a three lesson chapter, but we expanded things. On Thursday, they pretended that they worked for the Museum of Science and Industry, and created brochures on matter. This really helped them with the states of matter, as they had to define each state, draw an example, and list some other examples. I was not present when they did lesson 3, which covered how to measure the mass of an object. So, we will take some time this week, to examine different objects, and decide the best tool to use to measure it. We will also take some time to review for the test, which will either be Monday or Tuesday of next week. Important Dates:
Welcome back! It was so great to see all of their smiling faces walk through the door. I enjoyed hearing all of their stories about their vacation and they're still filling me in on things they forgot to tell me before. However, we are having a rocky time settling down into the swing of things. Hopefully next week will be better. I will not be in Thursday and Friday. Thursday I will be with my family and this weekend I'll be burying my great aunt and my grandfather. If you email me, I cannot promise that you would hear from me, but I will try to respond if there is time and as quickly as possible.
Math: We are moving back into fractions, which focuses on equivalent fractions. They are essentially learning about reducing fractions such as 6/12 and 5/10 into 1/2 and 6/8 and 9/12 into 3/4. We are learning to do so using a number line, and manipulatives. However, I also showed them how to use division to help them as well. We had to do a quick refresher on the fraction lessons that we covered, especially those with the number line, but they quickly got the hang of things. The actual challenge for them is to explain their answer. Today in class they were asked how could they explain that 5/6 was greater than 3/6 using fraction strips. A lot of them wanted to say that 5 is bigger than 3, which is true. However, they need to use the math vocabulary and explain that by using the fraction strip, you can see that the fraction 5/6 has more parts shaded, or more unit fraction parts than the fraction 3/6. Once we climbed over that hurdle they seemed to be more confident. Reading: The essential question for the week is "how do teams work together?" The curriculum has a focus on emergency team, and rescue dogs. So we discussed this question both in terms of emergency teams, and regular teams. We discussed the many important components of a team, such as communicating without yelling or anger, supporting each other, and being prepared. We also learned how these emergency teams are important to natural disasters such as wildfires. We learned that are three different forms of a wildfires (crown, surface, and ground). We also learned that wildfires are bad, but they have some positive effects as well, such as trees who need heat to release seeds can now do so, and it create new places for trees and plants to grow. For grammar we are working on pronoun verb agreement. On Thursday, they will jump back into the stories that we've had to push to the side a lot this year. The goal is to have those done by next Wednesday. Science: We are switching the way we do things in terms of homework. Along with the lesson check assignments that thy've done, they will also start reading a page or two in their science books and answering the questions that follow. This will not happen combined, nor will be it be an everyday thing. We are talking about matter and its components. We conducted a sound experiment where they had to use their listening skills to categorize the materials that they were given (paper, fraction strip, binder clip, paper clip, Popsicle stick, and coin). After the conducted their experiment and grouped the material they were asked to explain how they grouped them using the properties of matter (hardness, size, texture, shape, and color) that we had learned. Friday, they will learn the different ways they can measure the mass of something. They will then be given an opportunity to predict the mass of a range of objects, and then they will test to see if their hypothesis was correct. Social Studies: We finally jumped back into our textbooks and have come full circle with our community discussions. We are learning about the very first communities, the Native American tribes that lived there, and the explores who came over searching for the Americas. We will take a deeper look at each of the different communities, the tribes that lived there and the explorer(s) that came. Important Dates:
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