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Parent Conferences and Cultural Celebration

If you have not signed-up for parent conferences on November 12, please go to this link: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/60b0444a8ab2ea75-parent5

  

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.  

We will be continuing to focus on the story elements of fiction text: characters, setting, plot-problem, key events,  solution, and how understanding these elements help us more deeply understand a text.  Students will concentrate on understanding a character’s traits by paying attention to  a character’s actions, words, thoughts and feelings.  The reading strategies continue to  focus on are identifying theme, making predictions, asking questions, and determining importance.

Mathematics

We have completed Chapter Two: Estimation and Number Theory and have assessed the students’ knowledge. They have reviewed and corrected their mistakes, and have analyzed the types of mistakes they made and made a strategy for improvement. Many students found that they made errors because of rushing, not paying close attention to the instructions or their work.  We have identified these as “Sloppy” mistakes.   Finally, students reflected on what they did well on the test and how they can improve based on their mistakes.  The test, their reflection sheet and a BAN document explaining the test went home last week.  If you haven’t already, please review them with your student, sign and return to school. I will keep these in a portfolio for your child, which they will bring home at the end of each trimester.  

We will begin Chapter 3 this week, Whole Number Multiplication and Division.  In this unit, the students will be multiplying and dividing with and without regrouping.  They will multiply up to a 3-digit number by a 2-digit number, and divide up to a 4-digit number by a 1-digit number.  Students will also estimate products and quotients by rounding and multiplying or dividing to determine if their answer is reasonable. This unit is focused on multiplication and division.  It is crucial that the students have automaticity of their multiplication and division facts because subsequent skills are based on these facts. Students should practice these facts for 10 minutes a day.  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.  

Students have also been assessed for the multiplication facts that they need to know.  Students will be making flashcards for these facts and should practice with these cards whenever they can.  I would like theses flashcards to travel to and from school, so the students have access to them at school.

Social Studies

Students are continuing their study of map skills.  They are currently learning about map scale, and practicing how they can use a scale to determine the distance between places on a map.

Science

Students are continuing their study of weathering and erosion.  The past two weeks, the students explored how solid rocks break apart into smaller pieces through a process called weathering, including root wedging and ice wedging.  They participated in a sugar shake activity, where they modeled what weathering looks like when rocks tumble and crash into each other using sugar cubes in a container.  Students were able to measure how the cubes broke down during the shaking process. Students also participated in an activity where they were given the opportunity to move from models showing weathering to looking at actual earth materials that have been weathered.  They were given 4 different types of earth materials/sediment (rocks, gravel, coarse sand and fine sand) to sort the materials in an order that made sense to them.  Then the constructed an explanation by describing the way the sorted the materials and their reasoning for the sort.