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Parent Conferences and Cultural Celebration

This weekend a sign-up genius was sent for both parent conferences on November 12 and our cultural celebration the week of October 21.  Please check your email for these links.

Subject Update

Language Arts

Students continue to learn and practice the processes for our reading and writing classes.  I have completed all of the DRA’s and will soon be sending home your child’s current instructional and independent levels.  

Students are learning the skills of underlining, highlighting and note taking while reading text. These strategies help the students as we begin to practice answering questions.   We are following the “Problem Solving Steps” of Understand, Represent, Answer and Look Back to help us in answering questions.

We have been focusing on determining a story’s theme. The theme in a story is its underlying message or big idea.  Students are learning to determine what important belief about life the author is trying get across.  Common themes are acceptance, courage, kindness, cooperation, resourcefulness, compassion, perseverance, honesty, family, friendship, and being prepared. 

Mathematics

We have almost completed Chapter Two, Chapter Two: Estimation and Number Theory and the students will be taking their assessment this week.  Students have been learning about factors and multiples and are able to use a couple of strategies to find the Greatest Common Factor (GCF) and Least Common Multiple (LCM).  Students have reviewed the array model for multiplication and are learning to use the area model for multiplication.  

Students should be practicing their addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts daily.  About 10 minutes a day is helpful to maintain these skills.  All students have been set up with an XtraMath account.  XtraMath can be accessed from a computer or an iPad.  I have noticed that not all students have signed in to this account.  If you are having difficulty accessing your child’s account, please let me know. Even if your child also practices their facts in another manner, I’d like them to have this account current, because it is something that they will be able to access in school during math iPad choice time in the upcoming Multiplication and Division chapters.

Social Studies

Students are continuing their study of map skills.  They are currently learning about the lines of latitude and longitude, a geographic coordinate system used to locate every location of Earth.  This week students will be practicing using the coordinates to locate various countries and cities in the world.

  

Science

Students are continuing their study of weathering and erosion.  Last week, students learned that mechanical weathering can happen through frost wedging.  Using a Styrofoam cup to act as a rock, the students filled the cup with water (precipitation) and placed it in the freezer (freezing weather) over night. They made predictions about what would happen to the cup.  The next day, we looked at the cups and found that the water had frozen and expanded downward cracking and/or bumping out the bottom of the cup.  Afterwards, students made a Claim based on the Evidence and gave Reasoning for this in the real world.  Students will be practicing writing the C-E-R based on their experiments throughout the year.

Claim: The earth’s surface is affected by ice because water inside rock’s cracks can freeze and cause the rock to break.  

Evidence: When I observed the frozen Styrofoam cup, the water cracked the cup because it expanded.

Reasoning:This shows me that when water freezes on the earth’s surface, it can cause cracks in rocks.  When the water repeatedly freezes and thaws in the landscape this is called frost wedging.