Newsletter

 4-324 News

January 22, 2013

Dear Parents/Guardians:

           I hope this newsletter finds you well on this chilly day! We’ve got a busy week of learning planned. Here are some highlights from our week ahead…

Reading – During reading, we’ll continue work in our Fantasy Book Clubs. Each club is reading books by an author or within a series. This week, we’ll study scenes from multiple perspectives, looking at how each character in a scene thinks and feels. Seeing the scene from multiple perspectives will help us understand our books on deeper levels. We’ll identify events and objects our authors give more weight to, and we’ll study these closely, viewing them as windows into the deeper meaning of the book. As part of this work, we’ll consider symbolism in our books. Symbolism often shows up through repeating objects and colors. Thinking deeper about these symbols will help us understand our books’ messages and themes.

Writing – For writing workshop, we will continue work on our historical fiction pieces. On Tuesday, we’ll choose a story blurb we think has a lot of potential. Then, we’ll spend time getting to know our main characters, exploring their character traits and flaws. We’ll craft quick scenes exploring these traits and flaws, considering how our characters might act as they fetch water from a stream or go out picking berries. Since historical fiction pieces include both personal and historical problems, we’ll ensure our stories have a good balance of both problem types. We’ll plan our pieces carefully, holding onto our character’s problems and flaws as we write. Through planning, we’ll bring out the tension in our pieces. Multiple retellings will help us ensure we have strong story structures. By Friday, we’ll begin drafting our pieces, telling each scene of our story while walking in our character’s shoes.

Math – During math, we will continue our fractions study. We’ll work on plotting fractions precisely where they go on a number line, and we’ll use what we know about fraction equivalence to help us in this work.  Using the number lines we develop, we’ll examine our conjectures (big ideas that are true mathematically) around fractions, and we’ll work in partnerships to prove our conjectures. We’ll work on adding and subtracting mixed numbers, and we’ll plot fractions on line plots. We’ll also multiply fractions by smaller whole numbers (ex. 5 x ¼ = 5/4).

Social Studies – This week in social studies, we will continue our study of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag. As historians, when we study a new time period, we find it makes sense to study the lingo of that time period, so we’ll begin tracking words we learn that are specific to these two groups. We’ll look more closely at the interactions between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe in the New World. We’ll transfer everything we’ve learned during nonfiction reading in Reading Workshop to our nonfiction reading about the time period in Social Studies. In addition, we’ll begin studying images from the time period, thinking closely about how images fit with and go against what we know about the time period.

We’ll also continue our Art Studio cycle with Robin. Right now, we’re working on watercolor and oil pastel pieces. 

Word Study—This week, we will continue our word study program. Students will continue learning a set of Core Words that will cycle throughout the year. Through this process, we’ll engage in a variety of activities that will help us learn these words. We’ll explore the suffix ment. We’ll also study contractions. We’ll examine other situations where apostrophes are used to show ownership.

Students will continue to be held accountable for spelling their 75 Priority Words correctly. They have a copy of the words in their Writing Notebook and their Writing Folder, and they brought a copy home as well. The words can also be found on our blog if you’re ever doing homework away from home and need access to the list. If you see a dot next to a line of your child’s writing, it indicates a Priority Word is spelled incorrectly in that line. Students are responsible for spelling the Priority Words correctly in ALL the writing they do.

Other: Please note that we have a severe nut allergy in the classroom! Please avoid sending in snacks with nuts. If you send in a classroom treat, please let me know if the treat may contain nuts.

Important Dates

·      Tuesday, January 22—First day of 2013-2014 Kindergarten registration

·      Wednesday, January 23—Picture Retake Day (please let me know if you need your picture retaken or taken for the first time)

·      Thursday, January 24—Green and Healthy Night at 6:30 p.m.; No Homework Night!

·      Monday, January 28—CHIPS Food Drive begins (Send in nonperishable canned and boxed goods)

·      Friday, February 1—Family Friday from 8:40-9:20 a.m.; CHIPS Food Drive ends

·      Please send your child to school with a small snack each day (something they can eat in five minutes)

If you have any questions please feel free to write a note or email me at KatiePS321@gmail.com.  Thank you for all that you do! I look forward to working with you this year!

Katie