McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of January 25, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, February 1st - Reading logs due

Tuesday, February 2nd - Home link due

Wednesday, February 3rd - Early Release Wednesday

Thursday, February 4th -  Spelling due

Friday, February 5th - Home link due

Adventure-Based Learning

Thursday, Mrs. Murray was back with several challenges.  Kids needed to work in their groups to pass balloon balls using just two fingers in such as way that everyone gets a touch.  And then, we combined groups -- so our groups have doubled in size!  Most kids were excited to have new members to work with, and others recognized the potential challenges of larger groups.  Mrs. Murray also gave us a sneak peek at our upcoming Iditarod simulation!  She brought in a sled, ropes, flag markers, and a provisions crate, and demonstrated some of the skills the kids will develop and use after vacation.  More details to come on that in the coming weeks -- and as we keep an eye on the weather!

Report Cards

Report cards are in homework folders today.  The report card reflects your child’s work, performance, and achievement for the entire first semester.  All three team teachers collaborated on the reports.  All of the math grades were done by Mrs. Mayberry, and all of the science & social studies grades are from Mrs. Begley.  For our class, the reading and writing grades are recorded by Mrs. McFarland.  If your child receives full pull-out services through an IEP, the grades are based on their progress in that resource room class.  Please review and keep the report card, but sign the envelope and send it back to school on Monday.

Valentine’s Day

On Thursday, February 11th, students will have an opportunity to please include everyone in the class.  Each child should bring a container to collect Valentines.  This can be as simple as a plastic bag or as complex as a decorated shoebox.  I’ll send home a class list (hopefully today!).

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

Please check out your child’s huge packet of reading logs from October through this past Monday!  Wow!  We’ve done a lot of reading this year so far!  With that stack is a bright green assessment sheet that shows to what extent your child is meeting grade level expectations with at-home reading.  As you know, that reading time is paramount in your child’s reading development.  In addition, there is a purple Reading Workshop Reflection that your child filled out this morning, which will help me continue to get to know your child’s ideas about reading and will guide my thinking as I make plans for the second half of our year together.

    Today in class, kids studied their logs and commented about the books they were reading (“Those were the days when I was reading The Bell Bandit!”).  Some kids erased capitalization mistakes and fixed them (with no prompting from me).  Others are wondering about the new reading log option I’ll reveal on Monday, available to readers who have been consistently reading and logging!  More info to come on that next week!

Writing Workshop

This week, we shared our information books with some MIW friends!  On Monday, the Mayberrys met with Mrs. Follett’s class, who brought fairy tales, their informational books, and/or their wax museum speeches to share with us.  On Wednesday, the McFarland writers hosted Mrs. Dominski’s class, who also brought their informational books to share.  It was really fun!  

    We also started our new unit, Literary Essays.  We started by reading four stories that we’ll focus our essays on -- great reads with rich characters, underlying issues, and sophisticated writing that begs to be analyzed!  We worked with partners to craft succinct one-sentence summaries that we will use in the introduction paragraphs of the essays.  Next week, we will review the criteria for a strong thesis statement, study the Opinion Writing Checklist, and hopefully get really far into our first literary essay.  That one, we will write all together with much instruction and support.  Off we go!

Math

This week students learned how to use the partial products algorithm to multiply large numbers. We started out by multiplying 3- or 4-digit numbers by a 1-digit number and then moved into multiplying 2-digit by 2-digit numbers. In addition we worked with multi-step number stories involving money. On Friday students learned a fun game called Multiplication Wrestling.

Spelling

This week students looked at the word endings al/el/le, which are challenging because they make the same sound.  After brainstorming words that fit each ending, we did an activity where students had to look at a word with all three endings (ex: normle, normal, normel) and determine which was spelled correctly.  

Theme

This week we prepared for our magnet & electricity quiz, which we took today.  This included creating study cards, playing Jeopardy, and completing some review activities.  

    Next week we will start a PBL (project based learning) project, where students will create an invention that applies their knowledge of circuits and magnets to solve a problem.