From the Classrooms of 23B and 24B
For the Week of November 30th
In this Issue...
From Mrs. Younce
From Mrs. Johnson
Ways to Help at Home
Upcoming Events
From Mrs. Younce
This week we will focus on lesson 3.5-3.9. I also started a Problem of the Week to help us strengthen our word problem skills. I will send the homework for this part of the unit home tomorrow.
After all of our conversations at conferences I have been thinking a lot about math achievement. Here is a blog post about how attitude affects math achievement. It is written for teachers, but I invite you to take a look and see how you might be able to impact the math attitude at home. http://ww2.kqed.org/mindshift/2015/11/30/not-a-math-person-how-to-remove-obstacles-to-learning-math/
Social Studies Update
Today we started our focus on the geography of Washington state. I will send home an activity that asks you to work with your child to identify regions in the state that you have visited. Thank you for your help with this.
From Mrs. Johnson
Reading: Students are continuing their work in our Journeys Readers Workshop. So far we have focused on character traits, setting, and responding to our reading in our response journals. Next, we will focus on vocabulary. Starting this week, students will self-select vocabulary words from their novel, make predictions about each word’s meaning, and look up the actual definition in the dictionary.
Writing: We are continuing to move through our opinion writing unit. Together as a class, we wrote a full 5-paragraph essay about our love of ice cream. The students had plenty to share on this topic! This week we will further practice using the essay format as we look at the topic of earbuds. Ask your student what they learned today about the use of earbuds – both pros and cons. After this review, we will pick our own opinion topics and begin the process of writing essays independently.
Ways to Help at Home
Many of you asked if there are resources that you can access at home. We've included two here. NEWSELA requires you to set up an account, but it is free and easy to use. For ThinkCentral students use their school username and password to log on.
NEWSELA provides news articles organized by category. You have the capability to adjust the reading level of the articles and there are comprehension questions following many of the passages. They use Lexile reading levels. A fourth-grade Lexile equivalency would be between 700 and 800.
Think Central (login required): This is the online companion to our math program. Students can practice their math skills by accessing the Mega Math games. Students can access an online version of their activity book and use iTools to help answer homework problems.www-k6.thinkcentral.com
Upcoming Events
December 1st - Deadline to purchase tickets to PTSA Hockey night
December 3rd - PRRR Reading Logs due
December 4th - PTSA Movie Night - Polar Express
December 12th - Holiday Breakfast
December 14th - 4th Grade Holiday Concert (more information to come)
Contact Us
Mrs. Younce - mmorlock@tahomasd.us