McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of June 6th

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, June 13th -

Tuesday, June 14th -

Wednesday, June 15th- Full Day / Book Swap

Thursday, June 16th -  Team Reading Day

Friday, June 17th - Early Release / Report Cards go home

If your child has a summer birthday and would like to share a treat with the class next week, please feel free to send one in.  Let me know beforehand, if possible, and please send in easy-to-pass out, already-individually-wrapped treats.  Thank you!

This is our final week of classes.  Please check under beds, in the cars, etc., for any classroom books.  They are clearly marked in sharpie with Hedman, Begley, Mayberry, or McFarland.  We would appreciate their safe and timely return ASAP.  If a child is still reading one, please keep it until done.  

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

I’m finishing up the last of the Teacher College reading assessments to determine your child’s end-of-year Guided Reading Level.  At the end of next week, she’ll send home a summer reading packet, and attached to that, I’ll include your child’s level.  More importantly, though, is the information in the packet -- lots of tools to keep your child reading throughout the summer.  There are no magic solutions, but there are opportunities and ideas out there!  Summer reading will help your child to establish or continue a routine of reading for pleasure.  If your child doesn’t read for the two-month summer vacation, we can expect that s/he will start 5th grade behind where s/he left off in 4th, so please make it a priority to maintain the results of all that hard work this year!

Writing Workshop

Next week, students will be typing poems that they’ve worked hard to revise and edit this week.  We may not complete the anthology (fingers crossed!), but your child can access the Google account at home and continue some rainy day in July or August; most are quite savvy with logging in by now.  Your child brought home her/his THIRD grade spring writing prompt, which was passed along to me by the third grade teacher.  Instead of shredding it, I thought it might be fun for your child to reread it and consider how far s/he has come in the past year!

Math

As we wrap up the year I just want to let you know how much I have enjoyed working with your child this year in math. Even though the district has been using Everyday Math for many years this new edition came with some real challenges. All the students were troopers as they persevered through many math hurdles on their way to becoming capable mathematicians!

    Keeping hard earned math skills fresh over the summer months can be a challenge. My first recommendation is to have your child continue to practice basic subtraction and multiplication facts. Fact fluency can be lost over the summer and it only takes practicing about 10 minutes a few times a week to maintain these skills. This practice will serve them well as they enter their fifth grade math class in the fall.

    Also, playing board games such as UNO, cribbage, chess and cards games that involve math skills are another fun way to reinforce math skills. This link came across my desk recently and has some interesting board games to build mathematical thinking. The first few games have links to a paper copy of the game board. I have looked the other games up on Amazon and a few are very reasonable and look like fun.

Theme

The last quiz of the year should be in your child’s take home folder today.  We spent the week enjoying some choice time in theme.  We have engaged in kitchen chemistry experiments and revisited beloved activities, like Snap Circuits and Scrambled States of America.  We also had a guest speaker in the Mayberry class on Friday.  A big thank you to Dr. Asherman for sharing your knowledge and cool slides with us!

    Students also took the end of year spelling review and compared their results against the one they took in the fall.  Many of our students experienced some amazing growth!  They completed a reflection on their experience with spelling instruction this year, which will help me continue to tweak my practices going forward.Reading Workshop

I’m finishing up the last of the Teacher College reading assessments to determine your child’s end-of-year Guided Reading Level.  At the end of next week, I’ll send home a summer reading packet, and attached to that, I’ll include your child’s level.  More importantly, though, is the information in the packet -- lots of tools to keep your child reading throughout the summer.  There are no magic solutions, but there are opportunities and ideas out there!  Summer reading will help your child to establish or continue a routine of reading for pleasure.  If your child doesn’t read for the two-month summer vacation, we can expect that s/he will start 5th grade behind where s/he left off in 4th, so please make it a priority to maintain the results of all that hard work this year!