McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin
for the week of May 16, 2016
Due Dates / Upcoming Events:
Monday, May 23rd - Weekly reading logs due / 4th grade Friendship Musical 6pm (kids need to arrive at 5:50pm)
Tuesday, May 24th - Home link due
Wednesday, May 25th - McFarland book orders are due / Early Release
Thursday, May 26th - Spelling due
Friday, May 27th - Home link due / Project ACES
- May 23rd - 4th Grade Musical (have your child here at 5:50, white top/dark bottoms)
- May 27th - Project ACES - 1-3pm (outside: sneakers, water, sunscreen)
- June 2nd - ABL Celebration Day (outside: sneakers, water, sunscreen)
- June 7th - 4th Grade Field Trip to Strawbery Banke
- June 15th - Book Swap
- June 17th - Last Day of School
GMS ⅘ will hold an end-of-year book swap in the GMS lobby for all ⅘ students on Wednesday, June 15th! As a way to build excitement for summer reading, we are encouraging all students to participate by bringing in two (or more) gently used, grade-appropriate, relevant books to donate. High-interest nonfiction, “can’t-put-it-down” series, and unforgettable chapter books will be appreciated! Children, please bring your donations of books to your classroom by Friday, June 10th, so our generous volunteers have some time to organize them.
Academic Updates:
Reading Workshop
We continue to grow ideas with our mentor text (read aloud), Just Juice. In addition to poverty and illiteracy, the family also grapples with a lack of healthcare -- Ma is pregnant with a sixth child and is showing signs of possible gestational diabetes. So, yes, we’ve had some interesting conversations around all this. You might have some new questions to answer at home…:)
Writing Workshop
We are forging ahead with lots of poetry, trying to find a balance of reading some inspirational pieces and writing our own. This week, the kids wrote poems about everyday objects, helping readers to see those objects in a new way. We studied a couple poems like this by Valerie Worth, author of an anthology, All the Small Poems and Fourteen More. Then, we started writing poems about color. So far, we are working on a class color poem (McFarlands: brown; Mayberrys: yellow), and next week the kids will draft independently, choosing their own colors. I have several other poem projects in mind, as we barrel our way through the month of May and into June.
This week’s Rock-n-Roll Friday feature: “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson. 1987! Lots of rich discussion about the meaning behind the lyrics (even the seemingly random MJ shouts at the end), and connections to Ghandi (“Be the change you want to see in the world.”) and to a previous read aloud, Each Kindness: http://www.amazon.com/Each-Kindness-Addams-Award-Awards/dp/0399246525/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1463756800&sr=8-1&keywords=each+kindness
The room was silent when we watched the video:
Math
This week students took the end of unit assessment for unit 7. We spent time reviewing concepts prior to the assessment. We also worked on finding the perimeter and area of a rectangle using fraction measurements. So much of what we are now doing in math is applying the skills that they have been learning throughout the year.
Theme
This week the McFarland and Begley classes had an opportunity to dissect their owl pellets. We also learned about the structure of bones and what joints are. Students participated in a joint lab where they had their opposable thumb immobilized and had to perform a variety of tasks without it. A copy of a labeled skeleton was sent home with all students at the beginning of the week. Our bone quiz will be Friday, June 3rd. Please make sure your child is studying a little bit each week. My website has several games that students can play for practice.
We had also had our first expert visit the McFarland class! Dr. Barr spoke on Tuesday about his job as an orthopedic surgeon and brought several fascinating bones to show us. We were able to answer a lot of our questions on the Wonder Wall and it inspired even more curiosity about our complex skeletons.
No comments:
Post a Comment