It was a true pleasure to see you and talk about how your students are doing at conferences last week. These proved to be a great way to check in and make sure that we were all on the same page about your student and their needs here at school. I am so excited to move into this next part of the year with the deeper understanding of our class that you have all helped me build. Thank you for making the time for these important conversations! If we did not get a chance to meet and would like to, please let me know so that I can set up a time for this. We have some work coming up in the next few weeks that will bring our first few units to a close, so please keep reading these newsletters, and as always, let us know if you have any questions or concerns.
Announcements
- This week, all level 3 students will start having math homework. These assignments should not take more than 30 minutes to complete. If you find that your student is working on this for 30 minutes and is not finished, please let us know so that we can check in with them when they get to school and offer some help. Look for this in their yellow agenda folder!
- As we discussed in conferences, students will also be taking any unfinished work home as homework starting this week, so that we can stay on track as a class. As with the math homework, these should not take your student more than 30 minutes.
- If you would like to order scholastic books for your student, please be sure to have October orders in by this Friday, October 29th. There are also tabs at the top to look at books at lower or higher reading levels, or to shop by topic/area of interest. Here is our level 3 site: https://orders.scholastic.com/YJRMF
- After School Program Starts this Tuesday, October 26th, if this is something that we discussed at conferences, the office will call you on Monday or Tuesday to confirm your students’ participation in the program.
- Student Testing Kits for those of you who are participating in the OHSU testing program are here, and will be sent out this week. Those will come home with students on Monday, and we will collect them back from students on Tuesday when they arrive at school. Thank you for being willing to help with this program.
Project
Last week in project, we began to design our dream farms. We will use these for a simulation (*secret word*) in our classroom, and students will have the opportunity to practice thinking like a local farmer, and working with other groups in their Merlin Valley Town. They came up with 6 types of food that they wanted to produce, ranging from trees to individual crops, and from chicken eggs to cows for beef. They worked with their groups to make sure that everyone had a voice in the decision. For our Out and About last week, we went to the backyard garden and used some fallen sticks, leaves, bark, and harvested vines to make nature boats! The purpose of this was to explore a new natural principle: Nature Fits Form to Function. We decided which form we wanted our boats to have and designed them accordingly, the functions were Aesthetically Pleasing, Strong, or Fast.
Ask your student what food types they were excited to add to the farm and whether their boat’s form matched the function they wanted it to serve.
Next week, we will make final drafts of our farm map, and place them on a community Merlin Valley board in the classroom. Students will make decisions about how to manage their farms based on what they know about our principles of nature, and see what results from their decisions. We will also look at and create our own behavior over time graphs this week, and start to use our knowledge of natural principles to formulate hypotheses about our garden inquiry questions.
Literacy
Last week in Literacy, Merlins wrapped up their readings of Love That Dog by completing some “Dig Deeper” activities where they imagined what some of Miss Stretchberry’s letters to Jack might have said, and wrote a letter to Jack pretending to be Miss Stretchberry. They explored Theme with a paper toss game, and found evidence for their thoughts on the book. I am so impressed with their evidence-finding, please give them kudos for this. We wrapped up our mini-week by reading some books on the Epic! Website, which allows students to read books in full color pages, and use options like ‘read to me’ and watch videos of their favorite authors talking about upcoming books. In writing, we continued our poetry work by typing our poems up on google classroom, and working on alliteration with our Ode to A Letter. Students also were encouraged to indulge themselves with Free Write Friday, a new addition to our week. Merlins wrote letters to each other and family members, comics about our classroom and favorite games and books, and also wrote some freestyle poetry and stories. I am looking forward to continue to see what they come up with for free-writing; it gives us all a chance to express our true selves through writing, comedians and authors alike.
Ask your student what they imagine Miss Stretchberry (Jack’s Teacher) is like, and what they did for Free Write Friday. Also ask them if they have started to think about what poem they are going to recite for the class!
Next week, in reading, we will step back from literature groups, and nurture our own love of reading. We will do some reflection on what makes a ‘good fit book’ and use that knowledge to find a book that is at the exact right level. In writing, we will start our free-verse and slam style poems, and begin to type up poems for our Poetry Anthology Assignment, which is a culmination of all the poetry work we have done so far this year. We will also spend time this week memorizing and practicing a poem from a favorite author so that we can each do a poetry recitation for our class.
5th Grade Math
Last week in 5th grade math students worked on learning strategies for subtracting and multiplying decimals. Then, on Wednesday, we began applying our strategies for adding and subtracting decimals to a real world example, through making food choices on a restaurant menu and adding and subtracting costs. The intention of this exercise is to demonstrate the importance and application of decimal math computations. Next week we will continue to work on our application exercise, continue building strategies for multiplying decimals and take the pre assessment t for our next math unit so that I can build the unit in response to student understanding.
This week, fifth graders will begin taking home a homework workbook (this will come to and from school) and they will engage in math homework each day M-Th of the week. Spend some time talking with your student about their math homework plan. At what time will they complete their homework? How will they make sure that their homework book is ready to come back to school in the morning?
6th Grade Math
Last week in 6th grade math, students worked on comparing several ratios with different ratio tables and putting ratios in order. We also began to look at using double number lines as a way to show ratio relationships and using fractions within ratios when a whole number is not readily apparent. We did a group activity in which students each got a sticky note with a ratio and they had to find others in the room that had an equivalent ratio. This led to some great discussions between students about which ratios were and were not equivalent, and how they knew.
Ask your student what number lines have to do with ratios.
Next week, in 6th grade math, we will continue our practice with number lines, and extend it to practicing using the values from ratio tables to create equations, and taking those equations and transferring them to plots on the coordinate plane.