Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News
for the week of May 22, 2017
Due Dates / Upcoming Events:
Monday, May 29 - Memorial Day - no school
Tuesday, May 30 - Quotes due for writing workshop (see purple sheet in planner)
Wednesday, May 31 - McF’s have P.E. (sneakers)
Thursday, JUNE 1 - all-day ABL culminating event (see yellow half-sheet notice in your child’s HW planner) / math journal pages due
Friday, June 2 - quote paragraph due for writing workshop / Home Link due /
General News and Announcements
A 4th Grade Musical!
Please save the date of Monday, June 12th (5:50-6:30) when the entire fourth grade class performs for their first and only time on stage together until their Greely High School Graduation ceremony in 2025!
Students have been learning a variety of friendship-themed songs in their music classes this spring and will be ready to perform for families soon!
Please have your child meet her/his classroom teacher in the cafeteria at 5:50 to warm up. If you arrive earlier, please keep your child with you until then. Please make sure your child is all cute, wearing a white top and dark bottoms (pants, shorts, skirt…). Consider that it might get hot in the gym! See you there!
Academic Updates:
Reading Workshop
A big idea we are growing while reading Just Juice: Maybe Pa can’t read. Students cited evidence for this idea -- and some reasons we believe that maybe he can read and he just needs glasses. Class discussions have included social issues, such as paying taxes, inheritances, debt, illiteracy, poverty, families with lots of kids…
McFarland class exchange:
Student 1: “Why do they keep having kids if they can’t afford to feed them?”
Student 2: “It’s not like they can control it.”
Student 3: “Ummmm…”
Me: “So, anyway…”
Writing Workshop
We are right in the thick of it with poetry! We are working on our first class anthology. Each child will contribute a color poem. We studied the Poetry Writing Checklist to determine traits of high quality poetry. Lesson this week have included work on: line breaks, alliteration, imagery, personification, cliches, stanzas, steps for writing a poem… We’re busy and loving it!
This week’s Rock’n’Roll Friday selection: Brandi Carlile’s “That Wasn’t Me.” Here’s the video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNmo8I4dEQE)...but I recommend listening to it a couple of times without the video’s story in front of you.
We did that in class, first asking ourselves, “What kind of a person is the narrator?”
“Someone who did something bad and regrets it...someone who is asking for forgiveness...someone who is trying to make her life better…”
Then, we watched the video starring Kris Kristofferson as a released convict out on parole, and we discussed his story.
Math
This week students finished unit 7 and took the end of unit assessment. I will do my best to get their unit assessment packets sent home within the next week. We will delve into parts of unit 8 over the next few weeks, focusing primarily on solving multi-step number stories and learning how to multiply fractions with unlike denominators.
Theme
Students completed their water cycle posters this week. Several teachers in the wing remarked on what a nice job students did with this work and I totally agree. We also got a chance to explore IXL science and social studies as we have a trial subscription for the remainder of the year. Students were thrilled with how much they know in both areas.
On Friday some students took their final states quiz. Thanks for all the support you have given your child with studying the states.
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