McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of April 25th

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, May 2nd - Monthly reading calendars due/weekly reading logs due / HF stories for McFarland and Mayberry writers who chose to finish them at home are due

Tuesday, May 3rd - Home link due

Wednesday, May 4th - Early Release - Project ACES

Thursday, May 5th -  Spelling due / ABL

Friday, May 6th - Home link due

Brace yourselves!  We’re entering the busiest time of the year!  To help you get organized, we are starting a list of upcoming events that you’ll want to put on your calendars at home.  More information has been or will be communicated; be on the look-out for paper notices in backpacks on Fridays and emails.  We will continue to add to the list, as more events are added.

• Week of May 2nd - Staff Appreciation Week (THANK YOU for participating!)
• May 4th - Project ACES (“All Students Exercising Simultaneously”: wear sneakers, a white shirt for our team color, and bring a water bottle & snack)
• May 9th - STEM night (5:30-7:00pm)
• May 18th - Poetry Jam (5:30pm)
• May 23rd - 4th Grade Musical (have your child here at 5:50)
• June 2nd - ABL Celebration Day (outside: sneakers, water, sunscreen)
• June 7th - 4th Grade Field Trip to Strawbery Banke
• June 17th - Last Day of School

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

We define “social issues” as topics, often problems and often controversial, that affect many people in a community.  This is the focus of our new reading unit.  First lesson: “Social issues” is not a genre, like historical fiction or poetry.  Second lesson: There are no “social issues books,” but many books have characters who are dealing with social issues in them.  We discussed several books we’ve all read and to what extent social issues impacted the characters and the stories.  Some examples of social issues are: friendship, pollution, honesty, poverty, divorce, education, and bullying.  We’ve started reading Just Juice by Karen Hesse, a book about a girl and her family who, as you might imagine, are dealing with several social issues.  The students are using their readers notebooks to keep track of ideas about the characters.  We’re often leaning on the boxes and bullets format to organize our ideas and evidence from the text that supports that idea.  Check out these photos from Jackson’s notebook to see what I mean:

Writing Workshop

This week we focused completely on reviewing what makes a strong essay, in preparation for today’s essay writing prompt.  The kids identified areas on the Opinion Writing Checklist that they wanted some review on, and we dug out the old charts from the initial instruction early this winter.  We used most of Thursday’s period to plan their essays, and I am impressed by their plans!  My fingers are crossed that they pull it off on the prompts, and I’ll know soon as next Thursday is the scoring day.  As I type this, the McFarland writers are 100% focused on their work.  The room is silent except for the sound of pencil on paper: music to my ears!  The Mayberrys are up next...  

Math

This week in math students jumped into unit 7. We worked on multiplying a fraction by a whole number using real world applications with recipes. This unit is focused primarily on fractions and problem solving. Students also had an introduction to US liquid measurement conversions.

Spelling

This week we worked on adding prefixes and suffixes to words and knowing when to use -ise vs. -ize at the ends of words.

Theme

This week we’re back to our STEM project, Building a Better Mousetrap.  We learned how to make scale drawings in preparation for making blueprints of our trap.  Students reviewed the information they know about mice and researched additional information.  Each child had a chance to prepare a design, which they shared with the group.  Each group decided on one plan to execute.  They are now building their models, creating advertisements (ad, jingle, commercial), and preparing a presentation to make to Mr. Von when he returns in May.  I anticipate that next week we will wrap up the project and be able to begin our study of the skeletal system.