McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of October 26th

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, November 2nd - Reading logs due / Conferences / Swim stuff for P.E.

Tuesday, November 3rd - Study link due / Newspaper and Chorus after school

Wednesday, November 4th - Conferences

Thursday, November 5th -  Spelling due /  ABL / Color Guard 3:00-4:00pm

Friday, November 6th - McFarland’s Class to the Book Fair / Home link due

Please help your child be prepared for each swim class.  Your child’s swim bag should include: swim cap for hair longer than 3 inches, swim suit, goggles, towel, hair brush or comb.  

The Book Fair is here!  We will visit on Friday.  If you’d like your child to purchase something, please send them with cash that day.  Also, Mrs. Somes is looking for more volunteers next week - you can contact her at ssomes@msad51.org.  The Family Night will be 11/9 from 5:30-7:30pm.

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

We are growing ideas about characters in our read aloud, Journey.  We’re using the boxes and bullets method of taking notes in our readers’ notebooks, the same structure we are using to plan essays.  The kids have been asking questions about characters’ motivations, and we consider what has happened in the book so far to generate our own idea.  Then, we list parts of the story that support that idea.  Check that out from Maddie’s notebook below!  I’m loving this, especially because one of the reading classes has generated one idea that they will prove to be true and another that isn’t accurate.  It’ll be a great opportunity to show the kids that sometimes, as we read on, we need to revise our ideas -- and that even when we discover we’re wrong about an idea we have, we can still have a thoughtful, meaningful reading experience.

Writing Workshop

This week we have built three solid supporting idea paragraphs for our class essays.  The Mayberrys are working with the thesis statement, “Pets are great for some families,” and the McFarland writers are working on, “Kids should have more recess.”  We developed our supporting ideas and are now drafting on a graphic organizer to stay...well, organized.  We are focusing on mini-stories (instances of personal experience) as our most reliable option for evidence, but we will also be trying out surveys, interviews, quotes, and statistics for some variety of evidence.  Students are excited to be moving on to their own thesis statement ideas next week!

Math

In math this week students worked on finding factors for a given product, listing multiples of a given number and determining if a number is prime or composite. Success with all of these concepts is very dependent on students having a solid grasp of basic multiplication facts and/or using reasonable strategies to figure out the product for an unknown fact.

    Next week I will be sending home a packet of math games that you can play with your child to help reinforce basic concepts and fluency around multiplication. Stay tuned!

Spelling

This week students learned that the /aw/ sound can be spelled ou and ow.  Students also practiced applying suffix rules to add the suffixes -er and -est to base words.  Finally, students did a word building activity in class on Thursday.  This activity gives them a fixed number of letters and the teacher guides them through a sequence of building words so that they can see connections between words and learn strategies for spelling them.  Having movable cards makes it easy to fix incorrect attempts and brings a kinesthetic aspect to spelling.

Theme

This week students prepared for, and took, their first quiz.  All three classes did very well!  In addition to the instruction around study skills, I taught a mini lesson to show kids how to lift the level of their answers to show a deeper understanding of a concept.  

    An “M” or “Meets” is the grade a student’s work earns for showing a grade level understanding of the material (getting 9-10 questions right).  An M- might indicate that the child was close to a grade level understanding, but there is a small area of misconception.  To earn an M+ or E, a student’s work has to demonstrate a deeper understanding of several of the questions (not just adding more facts).  The example we used in class was the question, “What is sediment?”  A “meets” answer would be the definition, “broken down rock, sand, and soil.”  An “exceeds” answer would give the definition,  “broken down rock, sand, and soil,”  but then also explain how sediment is formed: “Sediment is formed through weathering and erosion which break down rocks,” and how it relates to rock formation: “Sediment piles up over time and gets compressed and squeezed together to form sedimentary rock.”  My hope is that this instruction makes the grading process transparent for both parents and students, so they know what the criteria is.

    On Thursday, we started talking about why and how Europeans started coming to North America to form colonies.  We are looking at this unit through the lens of “Survivor.”  What would a colonist need to do to survive in the “New World”?  What factors and decisions led to the successes and failures of the first colonies?   As we know, hands-on experiences make children’s learning richer.  We have an abundance of resources in New England!  Perhaps consider a trip to Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts or Strawberry Banke in Portsmouth, NH, both of which provide a glimpse into life in the 1600s.