Staying In-the-Know
with Mrs. Drayton
Dutch Fork Elementary The Academy of Environmental Sciences, Title I
2.9.17
VIP Folders and Reminders
- weekly grades
- progress reports (please sign & return)
- Suffixes Quiz, tomorrow, Friday 2/9
- Valentine's Day, Tuesday 2/14
- Early Release Day @ 11:40, Thursday 2/16
- President's Day/School Holiday, Monday 2/20
- In School Experience: Richlex Alumni Panel, Tuesday 2/21
- In School Experience: Traveling Trunk, Thursday, 2/23
Charting Our Learning about Analyzing Argumentative Texts
We continue to use the three questions:
1) What is the claim being made?
2) What reasons are given to support the claim?
3) What evidence is given to support the reasons?
We also have established language and vocabulary of arguments:
-claim: a strong opinion
-argument: a claim supported by reasons and evidence
-unsubstantiated: a claim that does not have good reasons
-overview: a text that gives a summary of both sides of an argument
-one-sided: a text that gives one side of an argument
Your child has selected a research topic to investigate! This has created lots of excitement in our room during reading workshop. We now have the understanding that texts come in a variety of formats, including, videos, propaganda posters, articles, and letters. We have been learning that there is a process to research including gathering resources, making a plan, raising new questions, and considering both sides of the argument. Next week, your child will participate in a flash-debate with his or her research team to clarify their thinking and determine what information is still needed.
U.S. History with Mrs. Ybarra
We have moved out of the 1920s and are now heading to The Great
Depression. Overall, there was a lot of improvement between the 1920s test
compared to the WWI test and I was very excited to celebrate this with the
students. We will be doing a simulation in class to introduce The Great
Depression that will help us understand causes of The Great Depression. We will
be looking at several books that discuss the hardships faced during this time. We
will think about how the characters faced these hardships and how they
overcame them.
Goal Setting
This week we began goal setting in the classroom. To keep our classroom
community strong, the students have been creating individual goals as well as
whole class goals. Students filled out a survey, that helped us look at the patterns
in our responses. We celebrated the things that we think we do well as a
classroom. Then we created a classroom goal based on the data we collected.
Every day the students come in and begin working on their personal goal. At the
end of the day, we reflect on our personal goal by thinking about if we met our
goal, not yet, and haven’t met my goal. We also reflect on the classroom goal and
think about how we are contributing to that goal. I am very excited to discuss our
goals as a whole class and celebrate our growth.