Hello parents and kids! Some of you might be checking out your new teacher, so I thought I’d say a quick “hello” to all of the blog reading families.

I’m very excited to start the school year with my new school family!

If you’re wondering what kinds of school supplies I would LOVE you to bring with you this year, they include:

Pencils (we can never have enough!)
Markers, fat or skinny are fine
Crayons (we have packs of 8 crayons, but if you want a bigger amount, please buy a 24 pack!)
Personal erasers
Personal pencil sharpeners
Kleenex
Clorox wipes, or similar
Hand Soap
Paper towels
Scissors

I will be sending home a more detailed note about our school year on the first day of school, but please, leave a comment if you or your child are in my class, and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog! Who’s excited!?

Hello! Happy spring break! Just a few FYIs. The class voted to have the math test on Monday rather than today so they could study longer. We talked about HOW to study for math (picture included). Please make sure to have your child study. Everyone did awesome with fractions this unit, so I really want it to show on their test. You can also go on commoncoresheets.com for additional practice (worksheets) if you have a printer.

Their HOMEWORK is to write their rough draft for their research project. We started it in class and they need to finish it by Monday, April 4. They do not need to type it, but they do need to write it, skipping lines, and edit for punctuation and capitals. This can be completed in one day, if you’re going on vacation, it will be able to get done.

Also, they need to go on myon.com and read at least 5 books and do the review/quiz that goes with the books. They can do it on a computer, iPad, iPhone, tablet, etc. anything with Internet.

Above is the information we collected for our science writing, some kids needed to finish it for homework.
This is our last week for our Earth science unit.

Math: We are doing fractions this week. Today we named improper and mixed number fractions. Here is a picture to explain how to name the numbers.

Sadly today, we did not know how to get in line after extra recess. I gave the students time to begin this in class, but if they didn’t it’s homework. These are the sentence stems for them to complete if they did not. Please sign your child’s paper today so they can bring it in tomorrow.

Holy smokes, this year is FLYING by! We have been super busy!

I wanted to update you all on the blog with what we’ve been up to in the classroom.

We just finished our division unit in math, and a lot of us still need to practice long division. It’s a difficult concept, and brand new, so please, keep practicing! We are beginning our new unit about fractions this week. We will be talking about decomposing fractions and equivalent fractions, then moving onto more difficult concepts after that is mastered.

In language arts, we are finishing our fantasy narratives. The kids are so incredibly imaginative and creative with these stories. I can’t wait to see their finished products! They’re also very interested in typing and adding text features into their writing. It’s all great stuff! In reading, we are focusing on narratives, fantasy in particular. We’ve been reading A Wrinkle in Time, and discussing the elements of fantasy, as well as character development.

Science has been very exciting! We’ve been doing a lot of projects and experiments. THe kids have really been thinking like engineers. I wish I had been taking more pictures, but I do have some great ones of their glacier experiments.

Social studies has been full of evaluation and analysis. We’ve been doing a project about the real-life situation of the Supreme Court Justice who recently passed away. Our class is proving what the most constitutional choice would be – should President Obama choose the new judge, or should the new president choose when he/she is voted into office? I can’t wait for their projects to be completed so you can find out what everyone is thinking!

Holy smokes, this year is flying by!

I’ve been keeping up with everyone on the class dojo and on the remind app, so I will keep this short and sweet.

Math: We are discussing decimals this unit. In this unit, students will extend their knowledge of the base-ten place-value system to decimals through the thousandths. This concept will also be extended to the relationship among metric units of length and conversions within the same length unit.

Science: We are LOVING science! We’ve been doing a lot of experiments about energy transfer. The kids are really doing amazing. Here are some pictures of the kids doing their insulator efficiency tests:

Social studies: We are ending our unit this week about human geography. The common assessment for the district will be on Friday.

Writing: We are talking a lot about adding voice to our writing. So far, we have discussed dialogue, punctuation, and similes.

Reading: We are still talking about informational writing. This week we are talking about chronological order, and how to answer questions that have to do with sequencing.

Hello! First off, we have started something new for reading comprehension. We are all working on informational texts right now, and a great strategy to use is something I call a Close Read, because you have to read it closely. We read the book, or section of the book four times. The first time, read the whole way through without stopping, and just decide what the main idea is. The second time, read the whole thing again, but stop and write down any questions you have about the topic. The third time, you read the pictures. The fourth time, you skim read the book and write an inference. Here is a picture of the format we use to keep track of all of this comprehension.

Everyone should know how to draw and fill in this chart. This is a perfect way to see if your child is understanding what they are reading.

Now business as usual…

Math: We are working on multiplying, factors, and story problems this week.

Science: We are working on energy transfer. We did a very cool energy transfer experiment yesterday where we predicted what color paper would make an ice cube melt the fastest.

Social Studies: This was a very exciting part of the day. Everyone had so much information in their schema. We are talking about immigration, and we found out some of our classmates immigrated, and many of our parents and grandparents immigrated. We will be talking more in depth about push and pull factors, too.

Language Arts: As I said at the beginning, we are working on informational reading. We are also writing informational essays. We will be writing an informational essay about push and pull factors soon, too!

Time sure is flying!

This is what we are up to this week.

Math: We will be doing in and out rules, as you may have seen on your child’s homework last night. We will also be finding multiples of numbers. (For example, the multiples of 5 are 5, 10, 15, 20…) We will also be comparing multiples of sets of numbers.

Writing: We will be doing an informational writing about the school this week to prepare for our informational writing about immigration next week.

Social Studies: We are talking about land use and immigration this week.

Science: Our new unit is piggy backing on our unit from last quarter. We are talking about the forms of energy. The acronym MELTS is helping us remember each form: Mechanical, Electrical, Light, Thermal, and Sound.

Reading: We are discussing non-fiction books. This week, we are focusing on Main idea and asking questions.

I look forward to conferences with some of you this week. The rest of you, I am excited to meet next week!

What a short week we are having this week!

We are finishing up the first report card marking, so there have been a lot of assessments lately, but that will be ending soon. However, assessments mean that we will be starting exciting new units soon!

This week, we are going to….

Math: Begin our new unit! This new unit includes numbers in base ten: multiplication. PLEASE, please, please practice basic multiplication facts with your child at home. Congratulations to Mohammed M and Yaseen S on getting 100% on their timed multiplication tests! Way to go! Multiplication will be getting more challenging, we will be doing one by one, one by two, one by three, and one by four, and two by two digit multiplication. I know everyone will do great!

Science: We will end our unit with a quiz this week. They’ve been doing really well with the unit.

Social studies: We will begin our unit on Movement- we will discuss push and pull factors for immigration and migration this week.

Reading: We will be doing a lot of informational reading this week, with fact and opinion, and descriptions.

Writing: We are doing informational writing this week. We will be describing some things we have learned so far this year.