Hello everyone!
Literacy:
Last week students completed their personal narratives and polished their pieces paying special attention to their leads and punctuating dialogue. Then I read aloud The Mysteries of Harris Burdick by Chris Van Alsburg and students are writing narratives related to these visual prompts. Ask your learner about their story ideas, they are certainly creative! We will continue to focus on writing narratives focusing on various ways authors begin a story as well as including dialogue punctuated correctly. We are hoping to finish these stories up in a few weeks and invite you in to hear them!
Students were also introduced to their first set of vocabulary words: divine, dazzle, crave, fulfill, triumph, stupefy, dejected and vanish. At the end of the week students will take a short quiz to demonstrate their understanding of the words.
Book groups began and students are working on reaing various books while engaging in discussions with teachers and peers. Our current read aloud is Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. This would be another great thing to talk about with your learner!
4th Grade Math
Students were assessed regarding their fluency with multiplication facts. We will be reviewing all together for the next weeks and those that need more time will work in a small group to solidify their fact fluency. Students also worked to find factors of various numbers and began using the partial product strategy to multiply two-digit numbers. Although we just began doing this many students took right to it! Ask your 4th grader to teach you how this strategy works.
5th Grade Math
5th Graders continued to work with the concepts of volume and surface area. Students should be feeling fairly confident with the formula to find volume: length x width x height= volume. This week students will explore what to do when they have the volume and just two of the dimensions. How will they find that third dimension?
5th graders will be heading to STARBASE again this week on Thursday.
Open House is this Thursday, September 29. Ms. Canales will hold a brief meeting about the International Baccalaureate program, an instructional framework that teachers and administrators have been investigating as a possible good fit for our district. That begins at 5:30 and Open House will follow from 6:00-7:00. We hope to see you there!
Below are a mix of photos from the past week: