Happy Friday! Thank you for making this year’s Curriculum Night
such a success. It was a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to a great
year of partnering with you. If you were unable to attend, your child
should have brought home all of the handouts and a copy of my presentation in
their Friday Folder. Please let me know if you have additional
questions/comments. Here is our classroom update:
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| Our terrific class! |
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| Math Game. Playing Polygon Pair-Up |
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| These are the 5 regions of Washington. Ask your student to tell you some things learned so far. |
Math
- This week we finished Unit 1 with a lesson on Inscribing Polygons, once students got the hang of it, they were able to create some fancy designs.
- We reviewed for the test with a couple of brainpop videos and a review worksheet.
- Students took the test on Thursday. I’m waiting for a few more absent students to return and take the test before grading/sending them all home
- Friday we started Unit 2: Using Numbers and Organizing Data.
- Attached to my email is the Family Letter for this Unit, please keep it handy.
Unit 2’s three main areas of focus
are:
- Examine different uses and equivalent names of numbers and review the base-ten place-value system
- Review procedures for addition and subtraction of multi-digit whole numbers.
- Reintroduce and extend ideas about data collection, organization, display, and analysis.
Reading
- Continued to read aloud There’s a Boy in the Girl’s Bathroom. Ask your child about their favorite part. Also, is it right/just that Bradley (who used to be a bully but has changed) is treated badly by other kids now? Why/why not?
- We also discussed the way we choose books, how to choose just the right book, why readers abandon books and we reinforced the difference between types of fiction and types of non-fiction, as well as some major categories of books within fiction.
- We learned that Reading is Thinking. We noticed and shared ways we’ve been thinking as we read.
- The class is doing a fantastic job of building up their stamina for Read to Self; ask them to share the success of their efforts with you.
Writing
- Students collected entries about their lives by writing about small moments of special places, special people, and objects that sparked memories.
- We discussed the difference between ‘watermelon’ topics and ‘seed’ stories and through examples, the class identified if the story was a watermelon (a big topic) or a seed (a small, clear moment).
- Also learned about the difference between summarizing and actually telling the story with all the true, exact details from the movie in our mind
- The purpose of this exercise is to help students focus their writing within a topic using specific, significant details.
Social
Studies
- We are continuing with our study of the Regions of Washington. This week students learned about the five regions of Washington through a pictorial that divides up our state by region.
- Ask your child what the five regions are (Coastal Region, Western Lowlands, Cascade Mountains, Okanogan Highlands, and Columbia Plateau).
- So far we have region, landform, geography and climate on our class dictionary.
- We watched a Brainpop Video about Latitude and Longitude
- Did some mapping work in partners with some large desk maps of Washington state. We looked at physical features, latitude/longitude, precipitation amounts, and talked about how these factors contribute to differences between the 5 regions in our state.
Thank you for your overwhelming support of our learning, it is
truly appreciated.
Happy Weekend!
