Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of November 28, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events

Monday, December 12 - reading logs due

Tuesday, December 13 - Home Link due

Wednesday, December 14 - book orders on-line due Scholastic Reading Club/Formerly Book Clubs – Parent/Teacher Ordering

Thursday, December 15 -  math journal pages: be all caught up

Friday, December 16 - Home Link due

Monday, December 19  - reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Thank you!

Dear Students & Families, Thank you for the generous contributions to the holiday drive for Native American Families in Maine.  We were so impressed with the volume of donations that quickly came in for the Thanksgiving drive. When we dropped the final items off this week the organizer said the contributions from the two classes made a significant difference this year. Every little bit helps!

Best, The Petrie Family

Adventure-Based Learning

Thursday, Mrs. Murray was back with a challenge from space!  After a huge game of dodging asteroids, groups prioritized a list of items they’d need to survive on the moon.  Then, they needed to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere through a portal (we call it a hula hoop), with certain guidelines.  We continue to be impressed by how well this group does with active, adventure-based challenges.  It’s quite a sight to behold when nearly one hundred kids are spread out all over the half-gym space, listening to directions about the next steps!  I’m grateful to have the support of the district to fund this unique program for all 4th graders.

    Mrs. Murray will join us again this coming Thursday for a make-up session from the day we lost due to the water main break last month.

Spelling Instruction

Friday, kids in both reading workshop classes experimented with their SpellingCity accounts.  Mrs. Mayberry and I are learning the program as well, and we want to take advantage of the variety of possibilities to support the development of our students.  For the first couple of weeks, we will work on it in  class, so I can track how long the activities take and can help guide the students with the technology aspect of it...though I must say that, realistically, they’ll be guiding me -- they’ll catch on much faster than I!  After the holidays, this will be a weekly homework assignment on-line.  Regarding students who receive their reading instruction in the resource room: I am not requiring that those children are also be responsible for this work, in addition to their spelling work in the resource room.  However, if you want your child to be involved in it, contact me, and we can figure out how to work that.

A message from the Petrie Family:

"Dear Students & Families, Thank you for the generous contributions to the holiday drive for Native American Families in Maine.  We were so impressed with the volume of donations that quickly came in for the Thanksgiving drive. When we dropped the final items off this week the organizer said the contributions from the two classes made a significant difference this year. Every little bit helps!

Best, The Petrie Family"

Penny Drive

Mr. Brooke’s 5th grade class is collecting pennies and other coins, bills and checks, in hopes of being able to donate over $1,000 to the Press Herald Toy Fund!  We have collection bags in the classroom for any donations.  Thank you to all of you who have donated already!

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

As you (hopefully) know, the focus of our reading workshop work has been on text features this week.  Monday, the kids worked with their reading partners on a scavenger hunt for text features in a number of nonfiction texts.  We spent most of our time on Tuesday reviewing study strategies.  

    Wednesdays we will start working on a regular basis on targeted reading skills.  Your child has a flowchart in her/his reading notebook, titled “Reading Priorities.”  This is a flowchart that I made up last year to explain to one reader about how many readers often learn and prioritize reading skills.  The skills are: engagement, accuracy, two aspects of fluency, and two kinds of comprehension.  I am seeing growth in engagement of almost all readers this fall (and it’s been exciting to hear parents’ feedback about that as well!).  Our first skill to focus on will be accuracy.  Ask your child about the story we read in class Wednesday with 4% of the words X’d out.  The teaching point of the lesson was to show how accuracy affects comprehension. The students were surprised that reading at 96% accuracy, no matter what level, has an effect on one’s ability to understand the text!

Writing Workshop

This week’s focus was writing supporting idea paragraphs.  It’s not easy work.  Check out the photo of the chart below.  Most writers were very focused on this task, and they used the chart well to guide their work.  We still need a lot of work on sentence fluency (Does that makes sense?  Where does a sentence end?  How do I fix run-on sentences?).  Adding to that new, sophisticated concepts, such as unpacking evidence, using transitions to switch from the evidence itself to explaining why it’s included, and writing strong ending sentences...well, we have some room to grow.  Next week, we’ll try to tighten up some of that sentence work, while also crafting introduction and conclusion paragraphs.  Later on for editing, we’ll invite some middle school classes to join us as mentors!

Math

This week students continued working with decimals. We spent time learning to read and write them correctly, learning how to compare them and how to convert tenths and hundredths to fractions.

Theme/Content

This week students learned more about the hardships and obstacles faced by the settlers of Jamestown, and we haven’t even reached the shores of Virginia! They also spent time planning what important items they would take with them if they were making this voyage to the New World in 1606.

   

Still looking for:

• Small yogurt containers
• Pipe cleaners
• Small plastic lids
• Straws - not bendy
• Small plastic cups
• Empty spools
• Plastic wrap