Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of October 17, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events

Monday, October 24- reading logs due

Tuesday, October 25 - Home Link due

Wednesday, October 26 - early release day / McFarlands have PE (swimming!)

Thursday, October 27 -  math box pages catch-up due

Friday, October 28 - Home Link due

Monday, October 31 - reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Please note that students should focus their math facts practice on subtraction and multiplication.  We are scratching out addition on the planner sheets, as almost everyone has mastered those.  Please see Mrs. Mayberry’s web page (https://sites.google.com/a/msad51.org/sheila_mayberry/) for a variety of ways to practice.  Students should mark what they practice on the weekly homework planner sheet, and parents should be initialing that each time.  Thanks to those of you who are doing that regularly!

Reading Workshop

Students took some time to reflect on their reading logs this week.  I made a packet of them (lots of minutes are logged in those stacks!), and I attached a sheet to summarize their at-home reading according to what each child has logged.  The kids studied their logs and made observations about their reading habits.  From there, each reader set a goal in order to become a stronger reader.  I’ll share those with you at our upcoming conference.

Writing Workshop

All writers finished the final drafts of their narratives this week!  It will take me awhile to score them, but we shared titles today, and they are really descriptive titles!  I’m excited to read these carefully and see how well each writer applied new concepts, such as paragraphing, using a balance of details (setting; action; TFR: thoughts, feelings, and reactions), and figurative language (similes and personification).  Next up: essays!

Math

This week students worked on converting unit of time; hours to minutes and minutes to seconds. This presented them with another opportunity to use their multiplication skills! We also did some work with multiplicative comparison statements and multiplicative comparison number stories with an unknown variable. Wow! They got a little dose of algebra on those days. In addition we had a quick lesson on how to classify triangles according to the size of the angles.

Theme/Content

Students continued to work on their geography flipbooks.