Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of April 24, 2017

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, May 1 - weekly reading logs are due / April reading calendars are due

Tuesday, May 2 - Home Link due  

Wednesday, May 3 -

Thursday, May 4 -  math journal pages due / ABL

Friday, May 5 -  First states quiz, goal 15 states

Monday, May 8 - weekly reading logs are due

General News and Announcements

Field Trip:

This week your child brought home a flyer with details about the field trip in June, please check planners if you haven’t seen the flyer.  All fourth graders are scheduled to go to Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth, NH.  If we have enough Mayberry and McFarland chaperones, we will plan for our classes to attend.  We’d like at least seven chaperones per class, and the more, the merrier!  Every child needs to bring back the bottom portion of the notice, with all relevant parts filled out.  It’s a super trip!

Latest fad:

Many students are beginning to bring “fidget spinners” to school.  While they are marketed as a tool for concentration, most students use them as toys.  One student even remarked on how they are, “all the rage and you can get them on Amazon.”  Students are having spinning contests, balancing them on their nose, fingers, etc… You get the picture. We have decided that fidget spinners will be allowed during snack and recess only.  Of course, if your child has a special plan that indicates a “fidget,” we will work together to find an alternative tool.

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

We are winding down with historical fiction, though we could focus on it for another few weeks and still have important concepts to delve into.  We are working on identifying patterns in the author’s word choice to lead us to identify a theme of a story: again, this is BIG work!  In fact, we will continue it throughout our next reading unit, which we will focus on social issues in literature, and I’ll also connect it to our next writing unit: poetry.

Writing Workshop

We are in the final stages of literary essay work!  Kids are typing them in class on their Google accounts.  Last week, we added direct quotes from the story, and most students tried out something advanced: to identify a craft move that the author made in the story.  The moves we focused on included strong word choice, the repetition of a word or phrase, and an important comparison or simile.  This is, like I said, advanced, and there were varying degrees of success.  We also added an introduction paragraph, in which each writer wrote a lead that made a connection for the reader, from the story to real life.  Then, they tried to use a strong ending sentence that connected back to the lead.  Pretty sophisticated stuff for our nine and ten year-old writers!  

    Coming up this week: meaningful conclusion paragraphs that answer the question, “Who would care about my big idea?  How is it relevant to a reader?”  I’m interested in moving writers waaaaaay past, “So, those are the reasons why…” and, “I hope you liked my essay!”  (Can you feel my cringe?)

Math

This week students started the 7th unit in the Everyday Math curriculum. We started the week with learning to convert US liquid measurements (gallons, quarts, pints and cups). The remainder of the week focused on multiplying a fraction by a whole number and solving related number stories.

Theme

In science this week students learned what makes our bones move and created a paper robot finger to simulate our own fingers and extended the concept by creating a paper robot hand. In addition, we also simulated an eye and learned how the lens and retina work together allowing us to see. Students were excited to discover that they could make their eye model work just like our real eyes. Fun stuff!