Your children are doing an absolutely amazing job adjusting to a very different kind of school year. I am so proud of their resilience and their stick-to-it mindset. They are a delight, and I am so grateful to have them as students.
MATH
We've worked our way through several math concepts so far this year.
We started with a quick review of place value concepts in September. The students worked with base ten blocks to build towers and their understanding of hundreds, tens, and ones.
Your child should be working now on memorizing multiplication facts. We will work on this in class, however practice at home is also valuable. Some resources for this are Freckle, IXL, and good old-fashioned flashcards. Your child knows how to log into Freckle and IXL Math.
If your child is a distance learner, please be sure your child can locate the base ten blocks that I sent home at the beginning of the year. They will be needed for our lessons. Thanks!
READING
We've worked on several skills during our reading times together.
- Making inferences with fiction and nonfiction text
- Character traits, character motivation, & character change
- Summarizing fiction using the SOMEBODY WANTED BUT SO THEN strategy
- Using text evidence to explain our thinking about text
- Identifying the central message--the moral or lesson--in fiction text
- Identifying the TOPIC, MAIN IDEA, and supporting details in nonfiction text
- Noticing that texts can have MORE than one main idea
The most important thing about reading is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, and PRACTICE more. Students in the classroom read daily. Students learning from home read and send me comments about their reading. Sometimes we mix things up and they share a short video using Flipgrid instead.
We started the year with a mini-unit on writing strong sentences with details. In October we worked on writing a persuasive letter. The students pretended to be pumpkins. Their task was to convince the farmer that they would NOT make good jack o' lanterns or pies.
- An entertaining beginning
- A detailed description of a winter setting
- A s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d out main event (the sled ride) that incorporated characters' thoughts, feelings, dialogue, and detailed play-by-play action
- An ending that wraps up the story in a satisfying way
Currently working on: Question and Answer books about a nonfiction topic. The children were able to choose their own topics.
We learned about weather at the beginning of the year. We will be wrapping up our Native Americans unit next week. The students enjoyed designing and creating models of wigwams.
Up Next: A science unit called Animals Through Time: Survival and Heredity. Through
As I have said before, THANK YOU for everything. Your children are very fortunate to have such supportive parents.