McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of March 9th

Reading Workshop

This week, we started to build our background knowledge of all things immigration!  While we are focusing on the time period when Ellis Island was used as a processing center, we have talked briefly about how immigration is still happening today, with all its complications and opinions.  Some students are asking parents about their own heritage, and they’re becoming curious about whether their ancestors came through Ellis Island.  Check out Mrs. Mayberry’s ThingLinks on her web page for more information for your child!

    I’ll be asking some students to pilot a new reading log format for the next few weeks.  Stay tuned to see if your child will have a change.

Writing Workshop

We have started my second-favorite writing unit, Literary Essay!  Students will be reading closely a handful of short texts.  I’m teaching them how to practice envisioning and then to develop thoughts and ideas, all the while staying accountable to the text.  This unit combines the best of our reading skills with the practical work of an essay.  Every year I am struck by how sophisticated the writing is during this unit, and I think this year will be no different!

Adventure-Based Learning

Adventure-Based Learning is hard!  Students are presented with challenges in which they need to work in groups of 10 or 12 to generate ideas to overcome the challenges.  Then, they try out the ideas.  And it doesn’t end there!  They come back together to evaluate what worked well and what didn’t.  You might imagine what that looks like and sounds like, right?  And then they try again…  A twist might be added to make it even harder, so the conversations must change to allow for that in their new plans. And then they try it again…

This program is the definition of the 4 C’s:

• Creativity and Innovation
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication
• Collaboration

We held a class community circle after todays’ ABL session, and the question I asked was, “How have you benefitted from ABL so far this year?”

Students’ comments are below:

“In my group at first, we had a boy girl and a girl group, but now everyone talks together.”

“Compromising with my brother.”

“Compromising with others and teamwork.”

“Working with other people.”

“Communicating, and letting people w/ smaller voices speak up.”

“My team has gotten better at doing stuff together.”

“Doing everyone’s ideas.”

“Being flexible with the ideas and going with ideas, rather than making up my own and trying to convince others go w/ MY idea.”

“Compromising and mixing ideas together.”

“Communication.”

“Teamwork.”

“Compared and added to ideas to make them better.”

“Working with a team, persevering even when it’s hard.”

“Not blaming each other for failing.”

“Working with other people.”

“Explaining why I want to do something different than the group.”

“Overcoming challenging activities.”

“Talking with other people.”

I’m pleased to see the reflection from the kids, and I’m happy to report that I see carryover into the classroom.  Through these shared experiences, we can look back and refer to situations when we struggled until we were successful.  That’s some REAL learning right there.

Math

Students finished up unit 6 this week with a strong dose of division work, that included renaming the remainder as a fraction and determining what to do with a remainder in a story problem. We also worked on angle measurement. Students practiced drawing an angle to an exact degree. This is especially tricky with an angle that measures greater than 180 degrees.

    On Friday students took the end of unit assessment. Expect the progress profiles and unit work to come home by the end of next week.

    Next up: fractions!

Spelling  

This week students practiced using the five suffix spelling rules to add various suffixes to words.  We especially honed in on words that end in y, learning when you have to change y to i and when you can keep the y as you add the suffix.

Theme

This week students learned about landforms.  On Monday, we learned what a landform is and we looked at common landforms found in the state of Maine.  Students illustrated a picture dictionary that will serve as a reference tool for them throughout this unit.  On Friday, we read Weslandia about a boy who creates his own civilization.  The major project of this unit will have students creating their own civilization; a continent that features many of the landforms we are studying.  They will make a map of their land which will have many of the same features we studied last week (compass rose, title, key, scale).

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 16th - Reading logs due  / Sneakers for P.E.

Tuesday, March 17th - Study link due / recorders for Music

Wednesday, March 18th - Early Release

Thursday, March 19th - Spelling due

Friday, March 20th - Study link due

Hope you’re having a fabulous weekend!