Week 31: April 10-14

Reminders:

• There will be no school this Friday April 14th.
• Scholastic Book orders due Tuesday, April 11th. 

Reading:  This week will launch a two week study of conclusions and inferences.  Inferring is something we do ALL the time.  We have learned and practiced what it means to "infer." 

When we infer, we use our schema (background knowledge), plus text clues to help us make an inference about characters, settings and events in the texts we read.  We will practice reading strategies this week to prepare our students to answer inference/drawing conclusions questions in a test-taking scenario.  We will be reading fiction and nonfiction texts in groups, partners, and independent settings to practice this very important reading skill.    

Writing:  It is PUBLICATION WEEK!  Our writers have been hard at work developing their persuasive pieces.   We will fine tune them this week as we prepare to share them with classmates on Thursday.  Your writer has worked diligently to craft their essays.  We can't wait to see the final products of their persuasive efforts!   

Spelling:  Students will take a test this Thursday, April 13th.   Next week, April 14th- April 21st, teachers will be looking for students to apply these spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies:  This week we will focus on how one artist, Kadir Nelson, made a lasting impact on a community’s culture.  We will be reading at least one book by Kadir Nelson. Nelson was dedicated to sharing the African American’s influence on our country’s culture. We will study his books and images to understand more about the stories he writes and the culture he shares with his audience.

Math: This week we will be looking at both time and money. It would be a great opportunity to have your child read clocks at home at different times as well as practice counting different coin and dollar combinations.  In addition to having your child read a analog clock, we will also be looking at elapsed time by adding time intervals of 30 minutes and 15 minutes. 

Here is an example of a type of clock problem-solving question we will be working on strategies for:

A group of students will enter the gym at 11:15. The group will then play basketball for 15 minutes. At what time will the group stop playing basketball? 

We will work on two strategies to solve this type of word problem. Each strategy will use a visual. One visual we will use is a analog clock and have students count by 5 minutes or 10 minutes to calculate the end time. Another strategy is using a number line that is labeled with the start time and then count up by hours,10 or 5 minutes to find the end time.


Please encourage your child to spend some time this week on Dreambox. This is a great program and can allow your child a great opportunity to strengthen their math skills. Here is the link https://play.dreambox.com/login/yf4j/c78d

School code for Ipad use is yf4j/c78d

Science : This week we will transition from the study of our Sun to its effect on weather here on earth. We will begin by examining thermometers and the different scales they can have. Most have a scale of 2 per line, but they can also count by 1, 5, and 10. Students will practice reading thermometers and then research the temperature in 5 different cities and display them on thermometers of different scales.