Week 26: March 5 - 9

Week 26: March 5 - 9

Reminders:
9 - Report Cards go home
12-16 Spring Break (No School)
20 - Third Nine Weeks Recognition Ceremony at 9:00 in the cafeteria
23 - Solar System Test
30 - Good Friday (No School)

Reading: Our students worked hard last week and showed amazing effort and skill on the READING practice STAAR test.  Please look for an email from your child's reading teacher by Friday, March 9th to tell you more about your child's reading strengths and areas for growth.  Mostly, know we are PROUD of their reading accomplishments thus far and it is only MARCH!

Narrative NonFiction will continue to be our genre focus for this week. Above you can see some of the titles we have been reading and discussing in class.  Specifically, this week, we will teach students a silly song that can serve as an EXCELLENT strategy for writing summaries or answering STAAR like questions about summary with narrative.  For a sneak peak, or simply to keep the fun going at home, check out this clip.



Writing: Essays will continue to be our genre of focus.  This week we will look at how to write a strong lead.  We will look at many styles and try them out with our first drafts to see which style might be most effective.  Below is a sample anchor chart.  Something like this will be built together in our classroom this week as we write.


Social Studies: Students will finish up their work with map skills.  We hope that maybe a few students have gotten excited and talked to you about how we learned to play BATTLESHIP using our grid map skills.  This week, we will also look the cultural traditions associated with St. Patrick's Day.

Math: During our math block this week, we will continue to look at division strategies and how we can apply these strategies to word problems. Your child will work to create division word problems to help with their understanding of the parts of  division word problems. On Wednesday and Friday, we will learn about area (Area Video). We have taught area models during our multiplication unit and we will make the connection between area and the area models we have already studied. On Thursday, we plan to complete a reflection paper from the practice STAAR that was taken last Monday. This tool helps your child zone in on the concepts they really understand and helps us to identify areas of need. We will send this paper home with your child so that you can use this as a discussion tool at home.

For homework this week, we will have a worksheet come home on Monday - Wednesday. We will not have a problem of the week this week. We will take a fast facts quiz on Friday. If you plan to be out of school on Friday, please let your child's teacher know so that they can take their fast facts quiz before the break.

Science: This week during science, we will continue talking about the relationship between the sun, moon, and Earth and our other planets. On Monday, we will work on the next set of vocabulary cards for the solar system unit. We will send home these cards and review sheet so that your child will be able to study nightly for our test. The date of the test Friday, March 23rd.  During the rest of the week, we will be studying the planets.

Week 24: February 19th-23rd

Week 24:  February 19th-23rd

Reminders:
19th:  Monday is a student holiday in honor of President's Day.  We'll see you tomorrow!

23rd: GO TEXAN DAY! Wear your best Cowboy/Cowgirl/Cowperson clothes!

26th: 3rd Math Practice STAAR 

27th: 3rd Reading Practice STAAR

28th: Field Trip Museum Natural Science. Please have your child bring a sack lunch to eat while on the field trip.

Reading:  We will continue to work through narrative nonfiction texts and comprehension strategies during our Reader's Workshop mini lessons.  Your readers will use text evidence to make inferences about the subject(s) of the true stories we read.  We will also spend some time this week reviewing strategies your readers can use while answering a multiple choice question.  

Writing:  Students will continue to write expository pieces. We've worked with graphic organizers to brainstorm supporting details that support our main ideas.  This week, we will focus on the structure of an expository essay.  We will model how to transfer important information from a graphic organizer into paragraphs within their essay.  

Social Studies:  We're looking forward to this week's activity in social studies!  We will be using a paper-based grid map to play Battleship.  Students will play one another to practice navigating grid maps.  We will then journal about our experience and strategy of using a grid map to play the game. 

Math: We will continue to dive deeper into Division word problems while introducing them to the various strategies that will build their confidence in solving those problems. We will discuss what Division means, review new vocabulary words (multiples, dividend, divisor, and quotient), and discuss when they divide in their life. Knowing their fact families can them solve problems! Please have your students study their multiplication facts. We like to have students skip count for fun (multiples of 6: 6, 12, 18)! 

Homework: The Problem of the Week will be sent home on Monday. Please have your child bring it to school on Friday. Homework #1-3 will be sent home Monday-Wednesday. Please have your child be on DreamBox for at least 20 minutes a day at home. 

Science: We will begin our Solar Sytem unit this week! This includes exploring main characteristics of the sun as a source of energy and physical characteristics of the Sun. Later in the week, we will explore the main characteristics of the moon and how it compares to Earth. We are so excited about this unit and your scientist will too!

Week 23: February 12th-16th

Week 23:  February 12th-16th
Reminders:
12th-16th:  Kindness Week
14th:  Valentine's Day parties will be held in your child's homeroom classroom from 2:25-2:55.  
The students can bring Valentines cards or candy, but we ask that you bring something for everyone in the class. The students will make treat bags during the party, so they do not need to bring a container for their treats and cards. Class headcounts are below.
Saint-Val: 20
Badrak: 18
Ford:  20
Duncan: 20
Morphey: 19
Rozzell: 21
19th:  Monday is a student holiday in honor of President's Day.  We'll see you Tuesday!

Reading:  We will shift gears this week to focus on the genre of narrative nonfiction.  Narrative Nonfiction is fact-based storytelling.  The facts about a person or situation are presented in a narrative, or story, format.  Biographies are probably the most common form of narrative nonfiction your readers are familiar with.  We'll start by comparing and contrasting this genre to both fiction and informational types of text.   We will then practice how to gather information from this narrative format to describe events and/or the subject of the text. 
Writing:  We're off to a great start within our expository writing unit!  This week we will continue to build main ideas off of a general prompt.  Some examples include:  Who is an important person in your life or what is something you cannot live without.  Your writers will support their main idea with details.  These details (facts, anecdotes, descriptions, etc) must relate to and explain their main idea.  
Social Studies:  We're spending some extra time on maps to reinforce the skills and concepts learned within the unit.  We will be finished with the unit project this week.    

Math: We will continue to dive deeper into multiplication word problems while using the strategy that works best for each student. Later in the week, we will begin our Division introduction and introduce what Division means. We will also introduce the students strategies on how to solve division word problems and how knowing their fact families will aid their success.
Homework: The Problem of the Week will be sent home on Monday. Please have your child bring it to school on Friday. Homework #1-3 will be sent home Monday-Wednesday. Please have your child be on DreamBox for at least 20 minutes a day at home. 

Science: We will continue to learn more about the different forces that cause the Earth's surface to change such as Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Landslides, Tsunamis, etc. The students will engage in activities that will help the students retain the information and use it in their daily lives and future conversations with others. The Rapid Changes of Earth Quiz is on Friday, February 16th. Please make sure your scientist is studying at least 20 minutes per day!

The Weekly Planner tab (on the right side) in this website is also a resource to communicate the specific homework(s) for the week. 

Update for Week of 12/14 - 12/18

Week of 12/14 - 12/18

It is hard to believe that our Holiday Break is almost here! Here are a couple of reminders about our upcoming week:

1) Wednesday is our field trip to the Menil Collection. Please have your child wear their white HCE spirit shirt. We will be back in time for lunch at school so no sack lunch is needed.

2) Friday is a Half Day! On this day, our schedule will be:
8:10 Announcements
9:30 Sing-A-Long
10:10 Recess
10:45 Lunch
11:15 Holiday Party 
12:00 Dismissal 

Math: In math this week, we will continue learning about Division. We started working on division last week. On Friday we worked on the Octopus Method. We will continue practicing with this method during the week as well as learning the Cookie Method. Below are examples of these two methods. For homework this week, your child will have three Mangahigh assignments. Please note: the Fast Facts Quiz will be on Thursday - 12/17. We will not have a problem of the week assigned this week. 

OCTOPUS Division METHOD EXAMPLE:
There were 56 lbs of food for the rhinos. The zoo wanted to share that food among 8 rhinos.  How many pounds would each rhino get, if they all got an equal amount?

COOKIES METHOD EXAMPLE:
There were 56 lbs of food for the rhinos at the zoo. The zoo keeper gave each rhino seven pounds of food.  How many rhinos were there at the zoo?

We learned a new station game for multiplication on Friday called Circles and Stars! 

Science: During our science time last week, we discussed force, motion, position, and work. We discussed friction with a toy car lab and on Friday, we did a gravity demonstration. We will continue discussing gravity this week and begin learning about magnetism.

Update for the week of 12/7

Week of December 7th - 11th 

LANGUAGE ARTS

READING- Students will apply what they know about the structure of a narrative to reproduce unfamiliar stories this week.  This exercise helps students apply what they know about narrative structure to make sense out of pieces of a story.  It's kind of like putting together a puzzle with out looking at the picture.  You know where the edges, corners and center pieces go and this helps you create the entire picture. 

This week and next I will be pulling students to administer their middle of the year reading assessment.  Please make sure that students are getting a good nights rest and a good breakfast so they will have everything working in their favor to do well.  

WRITING-Your kids have done an EXCELLENT job with descriptive writing!  This week we will focus on a project for our work that we will save and share with you at publisher's picnic.  Students will take one emotion.  They will illustrate the emotion and then create a descriptive writing piece about that emotion without using the word and only using language that helps you understand the emotion.  After our work last week, I can't wait to see what descriptive and creative ideas they will use in their writing.

WORD WORK-New spelling words came home 12/2.  We will assess on 12/9.  Students will then have from 12/10-12/16 to apply their spelling words to their writing and work for an application grade.  We work for 10-15 minutes each day to practice our word sorts.  A white copy of your child's words should have also come home for you to spend time working on at your convenience.

SOCIAL STUDIES- Literacy dominated last week and we have some catch up to do in Social Studies.  This week we will finish our discussion on parts of a map and globe and focus on the compass rose.  The compass allows us time to review cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) and introduce intermediate directions (northwest, southwest, northeast and southeast).  This is a great time to play some Simon Says at home using cardinal and intermediate directions. Always remember that you have access to our online resource www.studiesweekly.com to help your child review what we have learned in class. 

MATH- In math this week, we will review all of the strategies of multiplication that we have learned so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be creating multiplication word problems. On Thursday and Friday, we will begin working on division. We will be learning two methods for division. Your child will have Mangahigh homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. The assignments can be found on the Weekly Planner page. The problem of the week will be due on Friday and the Fast Facts Quiz will be on Friday as well. 

Octopus Method - You know the total and you know the number of groups

Cookie Method - You know the total and you know how many in each group

SCIENCE - This week we will be discussing force, friction, and motion. As we are learning, we will be discussing these words and definitions:

Motion-is a change in position  

Position-where an object is located.

Work-happens when a force moves an object over a distance. 

Force-is a push or pull that causes an object to move, stop, or change direction