Math: This week, students constructed circles with compasses and reviewed properties of polygons. Ask your student the difference between concentric and non-concentric circles or the attributes of a regular polygon. Monday, students will take the Unit 1 assessment. Tuesday we will begin Unit 2: Using Numbers and Organizing Data. 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.
The family letter for Unit 2 will come home with your student on Monday. After that, we’ll go paperless.
Parents received student passwords at Curriculum Night. Please take the time to make sure that your student can access the online games from home. http://www.everydaymathonline.com If you have any problems please let me know. If you were unable to attend Curriculum Night your student should have brought everything home on Thursday.
Also, if you would like to get in on the fun and explore some of the EDM online games, please do not use your student’s password as I will be monitoring their use and progress online. Instead, use the following login and password: jasmineh211 and the 662.
READING: This week students worked on “Read to Someone”. Ask your student about the guidelines (I Chart) for this activity and the important element of checking for comprehension.
Students are reading A Horse’s Tale. This book, by Nancy Luenn, covers the adventures of N’uks-Cha-Ska-Ha, a wooden toy horse, as he travels through 100 years in Washington state history. Each historical event affects the lives of children and the stories are linked as the horse passes from child to child. Ask your student about who carved N’uks-Cha-Ska-Ha and about William’s story.
Our first read aloud is Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli. Be sure to ask your child about what’s been happening lately in the book.
WRITTEN LANGUAGE: We’ve learned four different strategies for generating topics in personal narratives—think of a person, a place, or an object. Think of memories you associate with them, and then make a list. A fourth is to think of a watermelon topic (a very large topic, ie my soccer game) and think of the little seed stories (small moments/episodes ~3-20 minutes long) inside, and write those down. We’ve also talked about qualities of great personal narratives. See if your child can name some of the four we discussed. The students have been building their stamina to write more in their notebooks. On Friday we talked about the difference between summarizing and telling the story in a step-by-step fashion that includes all the details from the movie inside our heads. Ask them about Mr. Herzberg’s story about his brother sleepwalking, and the two versions I wrote. Which was better, and why?
SOCIAL STUDIES: We continue our study of Washington’s Regions. While we have just begun examining each region’s unique features, students should be able to share with you small details about these five regions. Ask your student which region of Washington William’s story, from Horse’s Tale, was set in, the region that has ghost towns and cattle ranches, the region we live in, the mountain region that divides Washington into two different weather regions, or the region surrounded by water on three sides.
