Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of January 30, 2017

Due Dates / Upcoming Events

Monday, February 6 - reading logs due

Tuesday, February 7 - Home Link due

Wednesday, February 8 - early release

Thursday, February 9 -  math journal pages: be all caught up

Friday, February 10 - SpellingCity activities due / Home Link due

Monday, February 13 - reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Looking for… the front and back panels of cereal boxes for an art project.

Valentine’s Day

Yes, your child has the option to bring in Valentines to share with every member of her/his class (just the homeroom class, please).  We will have a brief swap the afternoon of Tuesday, February 14th.  Whether your child decides to share Valentines or not, every child should bring in a container because s/he will go home with a lot of Valentines from classmates.  A container can be as fancy as a glittery, bedazzled handmade box or as simple as a reused Hannaford bag.  Our classes are also participating a special kind of Valentines swap; more details to come later...

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

Most researchers are now working on the written drafts of their slides for their Google slideshow presentation.  They are going to use the boxes and bullets format for a visual on each slide, and they’re planning their talking points for each slide.  One of the goals of the unit it to teach others, so late next week and early the following week, they’ll be presenting in front of the class!

Writing Workshop

Students worked wicked hard this week to compare and contrast the book, The Lorax, with the movie version.  It was a fun way round out the informational writing unit.

    Next up is literary essay!  This is tied for first place for my favorite writing unit (with poetry).  I am always blown away by what kids are able to do with this kind of writing.  They read closely and deeply to generate their own ideas about a text, and they use parts of the text to support their ideas. It’s truly a culmination of a lot of the higher-level reading comprehension work we’ve done throughout the year; plus, the essay demonstrates their progress with opinion writing.  I can’t wait to start next week!

Math

This week students were introduced to adding fractions with like denominators, adding mixed numbers with like denominators and adding fractions with denominators of 10 or 100. Students also started working on a new challenge to complete all IXL skills in Level F,  skill set Q. All these skills involve the work we are currently doing in class with fractions. The challenge is to complete these skills with a score of 90 or higher to earn a homework pass! Many students are well on their way to meeting this challenge.

Theme

In science this week students continued to explore the forces that break down rock. They learned how rock falls and landslides contribute to this process, and students completed an activity using sugar cubes to simulate how rocks break down when they tumble. In addition, students learned that there are two types of volcanoes, shield and cone, and how each of these types are dependent on whether the lava is thick or thin. They worked with a partner to work with thin and thick substances to discover how this all works in nature.