Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of October 24, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events

Monday, October 31- reading logs due

Tuesday, November 1 - Home Link due

Wednesday, November 2 - early release day / McFarlands have PE (swimming!)

Thursday, November 3 -  math box pages catch-up due / McFarlands visit the Book Fair (If you would like your child to make a purchase, please send in cash on that day.  If you would prefer to supervise that, Family Night is going to be Thursday, 11/10 until 7:45)

Friday, November 3 - Home Link due

Monday, November 6 - reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Annnnnnnnd, the (co-)winner of the GMS Fall Door Decorating Contest is….

Lost on a Mountain in Maine!

Thank you very much to Mary Jane Call and Molly for their creativity and leadership in this project!  The other 4th grade winner is Mrs. Bradeen’s class with their book, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom! Hope you can stop in and check out the creations soon (before they fall down). My favorite, besides ours, is Mr. Benoit's class's mosaic of the cover of the book, Wonder. Very impressive!

Students participated in a presentation by the Cromwell Center for Disabilities Awareness on Thursday.  Please read the yellow flier in your child’s mail for details.  At the end of the presentation, we received a copy of the chapter book, Hank Zipzer: Niagra Falls, or Does It?  It’s about a dynamic boy who happens to have ADHD.  The book has a Guided Reading Level of O.  Immediately, a student came to me and asked me about it to see if he could read it first (of course!).  I have other books in this series in our classroom library.  Our presenter then mentioned another book that kids might want to read: Fish in a Tree.  This one is most likely a higher level (it’s new and hasn’t been leveled yet), but I’ve heard great things about it, and I have a copy I’ve already shared with interested students earlier this year.  When one student asked me today if I have that book, I recommended reading it with a parent or in a book club so they have some support and can discuss it.  Boom: spontaneous book club formed!  I’ve already collected a few copies from generous staff members and printed off calendars so the kids can plan out their reading together.  Now, I’m working on a bookmark of things to talk about in a book club...

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

The kids worked on retelling.  This still needs a lot more work, so I’ve created a graphic organizer to provide more direction and support for some students.  We will continue that work next week while also adding more ways to jot our thinking as we read.  Our focus continues to be The Character.

Writing Workshop

This week, we got back to basics with a packet of grammar worksheets.  Topics included homophones, synonyms, and antonyms, goals being bring awareness of these concepts and to build vocabulary.  Students also wrote two journal jots early in the week.  We will start essays on Monday!

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.