Math: As we continue with Unit 2 students practiced identifying values of digits in numbers up to a billion and practiced reading and writing large numbers. Students played “Fishing for Digits”. “Fishing for Digits” combines place value and calculator skills. We also looked at data this week. Ask your child about how we used raisins in math the other day. We've talked about landmark numbers like minimum, maximum, range, mode and mean. Yesterday we made a line plot graph with sticky notes representing the number of people in each student's family. Ask your student how we then found the median using the sticky notes.
READING: We continue our journey through the decades learning about Washington’s History in our novel, Horse’s Tale. This week we read about the decades of the 1950s and 1960s, following the horse from Darrington to Seattle. Ask your child why Ole did not want to help his dad on the fishing boat. Also ask your child what the Puyallup Fairgrounds were used for during part of World War II.
In read aloud we continue to read Maniac Magee. Ask your child about the new friend that Maniac has made. Also, how are some of the stories that friend shares like the small moments stories we're writing in class?
WRITTEN LANGUAGE: Students continue to work on their seed stories. At this point they should have one fairly developed idea and should be starting in on a second. This week we've learned about how authors can use timelines to chart and plan out the main actions that happen in a story. Timelines allow us to eliminate extraneous parts from our small moments stories and also help us play with different points we could start the story. We talked about how you can zoom in on one timeline point and stretch it by detailing all the actions that occurred inside that.
SOCIAL STUDIES: We continue our study of Washington’s regions. This week we finished our expert groups with the Okanogan Highlands region. Students worked on individual tasks. Ask your child which ones they worked on. We also went to the computer lab and began our Glogs. Judging by their excitement--you've probably already heard. Meanwhile, we used the expert group facts and also gathered new facts to help students write five paragraphs about their chosen region that will go on their glog. Today, students took an open book assessment covering information in Chapter One of their textbooks.
