Read-A-Thon

It certainly seems like March has flown by! We have a quick 4 days next week and then, Spring Break! Next week we will be working hard to get some things completed before break.

This week in Reading Workshop we have been working on reading Historical Fiction. The class was divided in to book club groups and each group is reading a different historical fiction novel. Students have been keeping timelines of the history of the time period and of the main character’s history. We have discussed how a character’s perspective is shaped by not only the time period that they live in, but also by their role and their age. The have also learned to look for symbolism in the small details.

Students are continuing to work on ‘publishing’ the final drafts of their informational books that are about the American Revolution. We are planning to share these with our classmates on Thursday.

This week in math we worked on creating line plots from data, interpreting line plots and using line plots to answer questions about data. Students will be taking the line plot final test on Tuesday. We will then begin our unit on decimal numbers.

In Social Studies we are continuing to learn about our federal government. We have discussed the Separation of Powers and the system of Checks and Balances, next week we will be learning about the Bill of Rights. Also we will be sending home information pertaining to our Market Day pproject that is part of our Economics unit.

As a part of our Read-A-Thon today, we had a great assembly with Poet and Puppeteer, Kevin Kammeraad. we rehearsed and performed some Reader’s Theatres and we spent a lot of time reading everything from poetry to non-fiction! We also had the opportunity to plant a little surprise in the greenhouse!

 

Important Dates: 

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9 – Spring Break

Wednesday, April 12 – Link Up Concert

Tuesday, April 18 – Talent Show

Thursday, May 5 – Market Day

 

 

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

I love seeing all the green today! We had a little fun after recess today and did a St. Patrick’s Day Scavenger Hunt using the QR Code reader on the iPads to learn more about St. Patrick’s Day!

This week in Reading Workshop we have started our Historical Fiction unit (please see the email I sent this morning). Students will be working in book clubs reading carefully selcted Historical fiction novels. As we work on the skills need to read Historical fiction we will be reading Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars. This story is set in Copenhagen, Denmark during World War II. This week we began by learning taht when reading idtorical fiction it is imperative to pay attention to the who, what, where, when of the story right from the beginning. Students also learned about being aware of when the author uses flashbacks. Students also read The Yellow Star, the Legend of King Christian X.  We used this story to build a little background information for the novel and to talk about foreshadowing. Your child may express an interest in reading non-fiction books that tell about historical events that correspond with their book club books (Westward Expansion, Civil Rights, Dust Bowl, World War II). I will have some titles on Epic! for them to read.

In Writing we are continuing to revise and edit our final drafts of our informational books about events leading up to the American Revolution. Students have been working to add in text features and to create a glossary for their books.

In Math this week we finished a mini-unit of mutiplying fractions. Our next unit will be on Line Plots. Students will be using data to create line plots, interpret line plots and solve problems using line plots. We will be testing for this unit the last two days before Spring Break.

 

Important Dates: 

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9 – Spring Break

Wednesday, April 12 – Link Up Concert

Tuesday, April 18 – Talent Show