April Newsletter
Mrs. Williams' Class
Welcome back and happy spring!
Field Trip to TMS!
Butter Braids
Curriculum Information
Math
*We will not have a math lunchtime study session the week of March 31st. Review sessions will resume the week of April 7th.
We will finish the month of April starting Chapter 8. This chapter returns to working with fractions! We will spend a day or two reviewing the concepts we started earlier this year before continuing on to learn how to add and subtracted mixed numbers, multiplication of fractions and mixed numbers, and dividing fractions into equal, smaller fractions. We will complete this chapter the beginning of May.
Reading
This week, we are finishing our exploration with inferencing the text. We have been discussing the different ways to make inferences while reading and different types of inferences you can make. Students are continuing to use the "formula" for inferencing: BK + TC = I. Or Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Infer Meaning.
Next week, we will begin looking at a different reading strategy. The remainder of April will focus on determining importance in the text. Students will learn what we determine to be important in what we read depends on our purpose for reading it. When we read nonfiction, for example, we are reading to learn and remember information. We can't possibly remember every single detail in a nonfiction text, but we can learn to focus on the important information. Students will learn how to sort and sift through details in both fiction and nonfiction text to understand the important information and find the main ideas. When we are able to identify the main ideas and important information in our reading, students are able to understand larger concepts and most important portions of text.
April is National Poetry month! Students are going to focus some of our reading time on evaluating poetry. This month's letter and book report are on poetry. Information on these two projects can be found on the blog (link below).
Monthly Letters are due Monday, April 28th
April Book Report T-shirts due Wednesday, April 30th
Link to April monthly letter and book report: click here
Writing
We started the third unit of WEX today. This unit is focused on moving from nonfiction writing to fiction writing by writing short stories. We will practice by creating believable, realistic fiction pieces. Students are going to explore on perfecting their ability to create a strong plot and develop meaningful characters by incorporating dialogue into their writing. We will discuss the importance of balance between dialogue and narration in writing, as well as the impact of sequence in character revelation and plot development. Finally, students will experiment with their writing to try to make an impact on their audience.
Science/Social Studies
After Chapter 16, we will be switching to Science. Our final Science unit for the year is Energy. Students will explore and learn that energy takes many forms. That we can observe forms of energy all around us. Energy can more, or transfer, from place to place. Sometimes it changes form as it transfers. Machines help us use energy transfer to perform useful tasks. Students will have experiments that demonstrate how warmer things lose heat, or transfer heat energy, to cooler things until both become the same temperature. We will also have experiments that show how some materials conduct heat energy more easily than others.
Important Dates (In Order)
Thursday, April 3rd - ABC/25 After School Dance **Only students who have signed up in advance**
Wednesday, April 9th - Tour of Thomas Middle School
Friday, April 18th - NO SCHOOL
Wednesday, April 23rd - Butter Braids Order Forms Due
Monday, April 28th - April Monthly Letters Due
Wednesday, April 30th - April Book Reports Due
Thursday, May 8th - Butter Braids Delivered