Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and have a HEALTHY new year!! Sooo many illnesses going around. I’m encouraging the kids to wash their hands, but since we don’t have hand sanitizer or wipes in the classroom anymore, you may want to consider sending your child in with one in their backpack. We will wash desks daily here and try to keep all germs at bay.
I apologize for no weekly update last week. It was a busy whirl wind of a week. We are transitioning to many new projects in the new year and after report cards went out. Please reach out with any questions you might have regarding your child’s progress or goals for second trimester. I’m thrilled with the progress we have been making so far and look forward to a very productive second trimester.
Reading: We have switched from Non-fiction to our Fiction unit in reading. We have begun our whole class read aloud “Home of the Brave” about a refugee who moves to the USA from his Civil War torn country of Sudan. This is a fantastic book that we use throughout the term as a basis for studying theme, character development and change, and figurative language. The kids then apply what we learn together in this whole class book discussion to books they read independently and small groups in class.
Writing: As we study plot elements and descriptive language in our reading unit, we apply what we are learning in our Story/Personal narrative writing. The kids will learn various types of figurative language this week which will be applied in their narratives. We continue with our daily language review routine practicing common grammar rules, sentence structures, and parts of speech.
Social Studies: We have been learning about Ancient Native American tribes and cultures over the past 2 weeks. The kids have learned about the Anasazi, Maya, Aztecs and Mound Builders. They have learned about how ancient tribes moved from nomadic lifestyles, following their food source, to an agricultural society and the growth of civilizations. In the last unit from our text book, the students were allowed to use their book to locate answers within the text as we were practicing non-fiction reading strategies. In this unit, they are allowed to use their notes, which we work on together. They have been working hard at paraphrasing and turning the authors words into their own words, and determining importance within the text. They study the vocabulary prior to taking each quiz after each chapter. (Archaeologist, migrate, glacier, agriculture/ Surplus, civilization, Mesoamerica, empire, pueblo/woodlands, boundary/and drought.)
This week we begin a grade wide project on Native American tribes. Each group of 3 in our class will study a tribe in one of the 5 regions, with all 5 regions being covered in our class. They will be researching that region and that specific tribe, pulling together a slideshow presentation, an artifact creation and a poster. Then, they will meet up with the other groups from the other 4 classes who also research a tribe from that region and we will present to the fourth graders before February vacation. This project applies all they have learned in our non-fiction reading and writing units in trimester 1!
Math: We are learning long division; area model, partial products and standard algorithm in Unit 5. This test will be either later this week or early next week.
AIMSWEB testing: Today the kids are doing Math AIMSWEB and tomorrow they will be doing Reading AIMSWEB. I will analyze their scores and determine future learning based on these scores. This test is one test we use to determine progress, along with other classroom summative and formative assessments. If your child isn’t making the progress we want to see, I’ll be looking at other assessment data to determine what, if any, additional support needs to happen throughout the rest of the year.
Have a wonderful week!
Lisa