Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of March 13, 2017

Due Dates / Upcoming Events

Monday, March 20 - weekly reading logs due

Tuesday, March 21 - Home Link due

Wednesday, March 22 - early release

Thursday, March 23 -  math journal pages: be all caught up

Friday, March 24 - SpellingCity activities / Home Link due

Monday, March 25 - weekly reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Dear Families,

Thank you for your kind words of support after the loss of my mother.  The kids’ cards and sensitivity were much appreciated, too!

Parents: Please check whether your child is doing homework; more than a couple McFarland students are treating it as “optional.”  (I’m baaaaaaa-aaaaack!)

Weekend Homework: Many McFarland students have a weekend “re-do” assignment, a simple, easy shamrock project.  We are going to focus on thoughtful ideas and improved quality of work on round two.  This assignment is due on Monday, and your child may need help setting aside some time this weekend to complete it.

Conferences: Please search your inbox for spring parent/teacher conference sign-ups, if you have not done so already.

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

We are reading a book called The Memory Coat about a family who comes to America from Russia.  Students are learning reasons families and individuals came to America through Ellis Island and the risks and fears associated with it.  Our homeroom read aloud (for the McFarlands), Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, features the title character as an immigrant from Italy.  That’s not what the story is about...but it’s a fun connection -- and we’re enjoying help from Cora and Sofia in translating some of the Italian phrases Granny Torrelli uses!

    Next week, we will continue reading books about immigration through Ellis Island, and I will also be asking students to commit to choosing a HF chapter book after some book talks.  We’ll continue to reinforce the skill of identifying themes and will work toward synthesizing our knowledge about the time periods of slavery and immigration to grow our own ideas.

Writing Workshop

The theme work we are doing in Reading Workshop connects directly to the literary essay work we are doing in Writing Workshop.  We read a new story, Sebastian’s Roller Skates, which offers several possible focuses for big ideas for literary essays.  We are looking at ways the main character changes, what he learns or realizes over the course of the story, and identifying the theme of the story by using details from the text and then evaluating possible themes to determine the most accurate ones.  We’re bringing in concepts about the story mountain structure to determine turning points, zeroing in on details that indicate a change in the character.  There’s a lot of rich discussion, and the kids are getting lots of experience annotating their copies of the stories (which I call, “writing all over it”) for specific purposes.

Math

Even with a rather chopped up week we managed to jump into unit 6 and completed the first few lessons. Students reviewed the concept of fact families with multiplication and division and then applied that learning to extended division. In addition, we spent time working through some MEA math practice problems in preparation for the upcoming state testing.

Theme

To help support students when reading historical fiction in Mrs. McFarland’s reading class I taught several lessons this week covering the topic of immigration  in the United States. Students took a virtual field trip to Ellis Island and got to hear stories of young immigrants today. We also read Journey to Ellis Island, a true story of a young Russian immigrant and his experiences as he processed through Ellis Island in the early 1900’s.