Hello.
It was such a pleasure to meet or catch up with many of you this past
week at LAS Arts Night! I hope to have the opportunity to connect with
those families that I have yet to meet. We have a lot to accomplish
between now and the last day of school - June 20th.
Math -
You
should have received the fractions assessment and all paperwork before
vacation. We will continue to review and practice those concepts as we
move onto our next chapter. Unit Nine focuses on multiplication and
division. We have introduced multiplying with multiples of 10, 100, and
1,000 as well as lattice multiplication. This week we will focus on
the partial-products method for multiplying 1- and 2- digit numbers. We
will apply these skills working with money and word problems also. We
will work with division and remainders and how to interpret what they
mean. We will also work to find products of 2-digit numbers. It is
extremely important that the children know their math facts in order to
be successful with this unit. Could you please ensure they are
practicing each night? Students will be quizzed twice a week to be sure
they are know their math facts quickly and accurately. Each student
has gone through their facts and know which ones they know and which
they need to practice. We are practicing in class each day with
partners and with whole class games. I will be sending home math
homework once or twice a week. The blog link to the Everyday Math
family letter should be helpful if you are unsure about lattice
multiplication or partial product algorithms.
Reading -
Yes,
students will hand in their last reading log assignment tomorrow. We
have inferenced in so many creative ways. We are introducing the
synthesizing thinking stem with our class read aloud Owl in the Shower.
This book also ties in nicely with our biomes unit and the impact
humans have on the environment. It is time for me to organize reading
groups and practice those thinking stems with them. I will be reading
with four different groups. We will rotate through Lexia, reading
groups and biomes research/history of Hampton Falls stations over the
next few weeks. I have selected books from different series and hope it
will help students to find an author or character whom they’d like to
continue reading over the summer months.
Writing (across the curriculum and skill building) -
I
hope you had the chance to see your child’s writing at Arts Night. I
will keep The Best Part of Me writing up for a bit, then they will be
sent home as a keepsake. It was interesting to see what choices they
made and why. I thought they came out great!
We have been practicing paraphrasing this past week as we begin our
first research project on Biomes. Students are learning to read small
amounts of text and to put what they’ve read into their own words so
that they can remember it in a way that makes sense to them. We will
work on this research project much of this week, and students will bring
home a colorful, informative cube to share. In addition to this
project, we have been practicing daily editing skills. Last week we
focused on correcting run-on sentences. We will be moving on to
multiple meaning words as this ties in nicely with our word study unit -
adding suffixes to a root/base word to change the meaning, part of
speech or tense. We are also practicing making words ending in y plural
by adding -s or changing the y to i and adding -es.
Finally,
I just love how eager this group of students is to learn and to grow.
Attendance at school has been wonderful, and as we have so much to do
before summer, I hope it continues. We have such fun learning together!
I have been keeping track of wonderful examples of active learning
that I am observing and read it aloud at the end of each week to
students. They also like to end their days by writing in a “What I
learned today” journal. It is a fun way for students to take time to
notice how much we are “stretching their minds” in school each day.
I am working with Mrs. K to get the dates link updated through the end of the year. Thanks for your patience.
Thank you,
Jill Berry
