Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of October 16, 2017

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, October 23:  reading logs are due

Tuesday, October 24: Home Link due / McFarlands have P.E. (wear sneakers; we start swimming Oct. 31) / ABL (sneakers are helpful)

Wednesday, October 25: Mayberrys have P.E.: come prepared for swimming

Thursday, October 26: be caught up on math journal pages

Friday, October 27: Home Link due

Monday, October 28:  reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Recorder Orders: McFarland students got their order forms today -- and today was the due date!  Ooops, my mistake!  Please try your best to have your child return the form on Monday, even if s/he does not need to purchase a recorder.

Swimming in PE starts soon!

Mayberrys: Oct. 25

McFarlands: Oct. 31

Please see the notice in your child’s planner for details.

Thank you!

Thank you for the donations to our subscription to SpellingCity!  You can expect to see SpellingCity activities come home in the next couple of weeks as a regular homework assignment.

Parent/Teacher Conferences

Please check your email for the parent/teacher conference sign-ups.  We have most of you scheduled and look forward to taking some time to talk about your child’s growth and goals for the year!

Academic Updates:

Writing Workshop

Over the past couple of weeks, students have made good progress on writing their narratives.  We are working on revising to make sure we have a variety of details; to make sure we have combined dialogue with actions, setting details, and thoughts/feelings; and to make sure we have a strong lead and a meaningful ending.  Next week, we will focus on revising the heart of the story.

Reading Workshop

We hit the gas this week on reading our mentor text, Journey.  One lesson we did this week focused on how to figure out unfamiliar words.  The strategy is to read on for another sentence or two to look for key words (or clues) that can help us make a good guess as to what the unfamiliar word is.  A second strategy, often used in tandem with the first, is to read “backwards,” to back up a couple of sentences to find key words to help us figure out what that unfamiliar word means.  We practiced this with several words in Journey: peonies (key words: pink and white armfuls, pitchers, smell, blooms), haughtily (key words: ran out of patience, insulted, then he brightened), and banished (key words: lost her patience, go away).  The kids have been practicing with their own independent books.  

    This is an important skill, especially when students read “above their levels” and begin to read faster (not necessarily a good thing) and more fluently.  We can become rather passive and simply move on, missing opportunities to get smarter.

    

Math

This week we kicked off the second unit in Everyday Math. Students learned how to calculate area of a rectangle or square using the formula: A=LxW. Part of this learning included playing Rugs and Fences on ConnectEd. Ask your child to login to their ConnectEd account (login and passwords are in their planner) and challenge them to a fun game. The time spent can count toward their weekly math fact practice minutes.

    In addition to learning how to determine area of a rectangle students also learned about square numbers, how to find all the factors for a given number and how to list multiples of a number. All of this work depends on strong multiplication fact fluency. So…. please continue to support your 4th grader in learning their multiplication facts by making sure they are practicing a minimum of three times a week for ten minutes each time.

Theme

In science this week we spent time reviewing concepts from our Birth of Rocks unit by answering questions on a site called Kahoot. This was a great way to review for the unit test they took on Tuesday.

    We will be leaving science behind for a bit while we cycle back for some geography. Students are creating a ‘cartography flipbook’ which defines various landforms and bodies of water. This project will roll into their final cartography project, to be revealed in a few weeks.