Room 26 Weekly News
April 11, 2016
Announcements
Thank you SO much for all of the birthday wishes, flowers, candy, and gift card! It was so kind and generous of you. The students were ADORABLE. They made cards and signs for me, and when I came out to pick them up on the blacktop on Friday morning, they all sang "Happy Birthday." It was unbelievably sweet! I am a lucky teacher!
Academic Updates
Language Arts
We are continuing our novel study of Tuck Everlasting this week. We have been having wonderful discussions about the story! We have also been examining some of the techniques the author uses to make her sentences come alive. We are using some of them as "mentor sentences" to teach us how we might incorporate particular techniques into our own writing.
Math
We have finished our lightning-fast unit on Geometry and will begin our new unit this week. This week's focus will be on converting units of measurement. We will be learning how to convert both metric and customary units of length, weight, and capacity. This involves a lot of memorization (i.e., How many cups are in gallon? How many feet in a mile? How many ounces in a pound?) and math skills (converting between metric units will require all of the powers of 10 skills we've practiced in earlier math units). You can encourage your child by having them convert the measurements of whatever you have around the house. For example, when you pull out a gallon of milk, ask your child how many pints there are.
Science
We are continuing to learn and explore cells. Your students practiced taking Cornell Notes using our textbook last week. They also did independent research to find the functions of the various parts of an animal cell, and are working in class to complete a cell model. We will finish our cell models this week, and will work towards completing the rest of this chapter.
Social Studies
Your students began working on their state report projects on Friday. As I told the students, they will receive some time to work on their slideshows in class, but will likely need to work on some of it at home as well. (To give you a rough idea, last year, my son completed about 1/3 of his slides in class and did about 2/3 at home.) We will also be starting Chapter 10 of our textbook, about how the U.S. Government was formed, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, etc.
Specials
P.E. - Monday and Wednesday
Science Garden - Tuesday
Library - Thursday
Flag Salute - Friday