A huge thank you to our incredible Whittier PTO for the generous classroom donation they awarded to each of us teachers this year. I've put part of this gift toward supplemental science materials, like magnets, mealworm materials and bug containers, and I'm weighing my options carefully for the rest. More to report in the next few weeks!
4th Grade Math: We're half-way through our first math unit: Naming and Constructing Geometric Figures. Next week I'll give the students a quick-check quiz to assess their learning so far, and based on these results we'll continue accordingly. We're still reviewing rays, line segments, lines, and angles; parallelograms and other quadrangles; and polygons. We'll also briefly cover constructing circles and triangles with a compass. Prior to our first unit test, I'll send home an overview to families reviewing the topics covered, and we'll do a review of the unit in class as a 'study session.'
5th Grade Math: Check out Ms. Wennerberg's website and newsletter for updates: http://www.op97.org/swennerberg/
Writing: Writing workshop is developing nicely with students starting to feel comfortable trying new ideas. We're still in the 'brainstorming' phase, building topics and stamina. Today I introduced the term 'genre' and gave the kids a giant list of 'genre' possibilities (different kinds of writing). We talked about how you could take a topic, like baseball, and write about it in a bunch of different ways. You could write a poem, a personal narrative, a comic, a letter to a player, a review of a coach, etc. This mini-lesson really helped focus some of the kids; I look forward to introducing text samples and getting into the drafting process.
Reading: We are still loving The View From Saturday by E.L. Konigsburg. It's opened up quite a few discussions, some lighter, based on hobby and pop-culture references, and others deeper, like identifying with a character's feelings or analyzing a character's actions. I can say without exaggeration that every kid in our class is engaged, so it's not only been a nice learning tool, but also something that unites our class.
Additionally, we've done a short research project on sea turtles to build our background knowledge about one of the books' events. The research helped the kids get acclimated to the Netbooks while introducing them to good research practices. Now we are synthesizing the info as a class. Together we'll write a summary report of what they learned; this will model how to summarize and organize a large chunk of information, a skill that they'll use throughout the year in all of their subjects. Ask your kids about our novel, as well as the sea turtles!
Social Studies: Check out Ms. Wennerberg's website and newsletter for updates: http://www.op97.org/swennerberg/
Science: This week the kids read two versions of the same article, one with text features (titles, pictures, etc) and the other without. We discussed their purpose and they took notes on these features. This will come in handy for when they write their own articles about the mealworms. Next week we'll actually begin observing the mealworms! Ask your kids about a few that have already shed their skin!
Miscellaneous:
- Camp Edwards info went out to fifth grade parents last week. It's not due until early November, but please let me know if you have questions.
- If you were not at Curriculum Night to sign up for a conference, please email me and we'll set one up. mroskos@op97.org
