A few things before I get to the academics:
I am looking forward to meeting with all of you at conferences either tomorrow night or Thursday night! If you need a reminder of your day and time, please let me know.
We have our spring book fair going on during conferences. It is a buy one get one half off so if you get a chance, please visit the book fair being held in our school library.
I have MobyMax log ins to hand out to you at conferences. These log ins can be used for a math program called MobyMax. I usually try to use this in the classroom, but have not had the chance to do so this year. There is a link in the blog under the Links tab, but you will need your child's username and password. This is what I will give you at conferences. You will also the school code: MI2934 . Make sure you log in under "as a student." All of this should be clear once you log in, but please let me know if you have any questions. The kids will have to take a small math test so the program knows where to start your child off.
Math - we have just begun a new math unit last week. This unit will cover graphing and comparing data. The kids will be learning how to answer the questions how many more or how many fewer. They will also be learning how to use comparison bars to help them solve story problems. Look for homework to come home that will show you how we are doing these types of problems in class. This is one of our trickier units.
Our last unit in math was a bit tricky as well. I will continue to review this unit with some of the kids because there really was a whole lot of information and strategies they needed to switch between and this got to be a little confusing to some.
Reading - we are working hard in our genre unit. This unit really takes a look at how kids can pick a topic and read about that topic over different genres: fiction, non-fiction, magazines, poetry, etc. This week our focus will be on how we can read about something in a fiction book and think about what we really know about that topic. For example, we were reading the fiction book Bear Wants More and it talks about how bear woke from a long slumber and he was hungry. He was looking for food and found some shoots. The kids were able to talk about how they know that bears hibernate and eat things like meat, berries, and plants. They also talked about how bears don't eat when they hibernate so he must have been really hungry. Kids can compare what they read in a fiction book to facts in a non-fiction book.
Writing - we are going to wrap up our small moment story writing unit this week. After spring break we will jump into our non-fiction writing unit where the kids will be writing about topics they know something about. We will be able to do some research on their topics as well. This will be a great opportunity for the kids to get a taste of what research is and how to do the research about a topic.
Social Studies - we are wrapping up our history unit by working in groups and working on posters. The kids will have to work together to design a poster by following a rubric. They will have some magazines and books to look through to find their facts. From there they will have to work on putting this information on a poster. The final thing will be presenting their posters to the class. This is alway a great opportunity for kids to learn to work together, make a plan and follow a rubric, to do nice, neat work, and how to present to a class. It will also give them practice to be an audience member as they listen to their classmates present.
The kids had an awesome day at flashlight Friday! They used their flashlights to read with partners and to be detectives as they looked for our r controlled (er, ir, ur) words hidden around the classroom. It was a ton of fun!!! Enjoy some pics :)