Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of November 13, 2017

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, November 20:  reading logs are due

Tuesday, November 21: McFarlands have P.E.: come prepared for swimming

Wednesday, November 22-Sunday, November 26: Thanksgiving break for all!

Monday, November 27: reading logs due (at least four different days, for at least 25 minutes each time, as usual)

Tuesday, November 28: Home Link due / McFarlands have P.E.: come prepared for swimming

Wednesday, November 29: early release

Thursday, November 30: be caught up on math journal pages

Friday, December 1: Home Link due / SpellingCity activities due (save TestMe for in class on Friday)

Monday, December 4: reading logs due

General News and Announcements

Wonder

The movie version of our current read aloud book, Wonder, is out!  I plan to see this very soon--maybe this weekend--with my fifth-grader, and I am confident it’s a better bet than The Lego Movie (wish I could buy back those two hours).  Hope to have lost of conversations with kids at snack time, dismissal, and at read aloud time, etc., about the movie!

Towel for lockers

Students will be storing boots, snowpants, and other snow gear in their lockers this winter season.  A hand towel spread out at the bottom of the locker is ideal for absorbing melting snow and drying out quickly overnight.  Please send one in with your child as soon as you can; winter weather is apparently upon us.

Write name inside coats

Speaking of winter gear, please take some time this weekend to mark your child’s name in all outerwear.  At a morning meeting share earlier this week, kids talked about their strategies for keeping track of their gear from the transition from playground to cafeteria (because they aren’t allowed to come upstairs to drop off gear before going to the cafeteria).  All students shared reasonable ideas that mostly included hanging jackets on the backs of their chairs.  Yet, several students have left their jackets outside the cafeteria near the stairs and then haven’t been able to find them afterwards.  That’s odd.  I am confident that we’ll get to the bottom of the missing coats, but it will be a great help if students names are clearly marked on their stuff.  [UPDATE: Coats have been found in other classes’ lunch bins!]

Special Guest

On Tuesday, November 21st, Mrs. Mayberry’s daughter, Mikayla, and one of her fellow nursing classmates from UMO, will be coming to teach students about the importance of good hand hygiene (especially important this time of year) and nutrition facts about foods they eat. We look forward to their visit.

Academic Updates:

Writing Workshop

We are well underway with our Opinion Writing (essay) unit!  Students did a pre-assessment at the end of last week, and I’m studying those specifically for the way students organize their opinion ideas.  This is related to a goal for our Teacher Evaluation System.  Students have done some “practice-writing” in their notebooks, taking one of two stances: “Homework is good for kids,” or “Kids should not have homework.”  The following day, they were expected to write about--surprise--the exact opposite stance they wrote about the previous day!  I was, in fact, impressed with the flexibility of their thinking and ability to see an issue from two sides.

    When we return for Thanksgiving break, we will focus on crafting a strong thesis statement.  This is one of the most important parts of writing an essay, as the entire piece rests on this foundation.

Reading Workshop

We are winding down our unit on making interpretations about characters.  I could teach this all year long!  In fact, we revisit related concepts both informally (in read alouds and in writing units) and formally (in upcoming reading units: social issues and historical fiction).  This past week, we worked together on a practice assessment.  We used our mentor text, Journey, to answer high-level comprehension questions about how characters change, how one part of a story fits with other parts, theme, and story elements.  We studied parts of the rubric so students could see how responses are scored and how they can revise their responses to make them stronger.  

Monday and Tuesday, students will take an assessment independently to show their learning about these concepts.  Also, our super-crafty librarian and media specialist, Mrs. Hall-Riddle, has McGyvered a way to watch a VHS version of Journey through our projector in the classroom!  Can’t find a DVD version anywhere!

    Next up: nonfiction!

    

Math

This week students took the end of unit assessment for unit 2. I will be sending assessment packets home next week, please check your child’s planner for returned work on Tuesday, November 21st.

We also kicked off unit 3 this week, which is the first of three units focusing on fractions. Students explored to model by draw pictorial answers to fraction number stories. They also started to used fraction circle manipulatives to discover fraction equivalences between fractions with different denominators.

Theme

This week students were introduced to the final project in our cartography/geography unit. Captain Mayberry has given them the mission of  creating a map of a newly discovered land. This is where the skills learned in the first two projects meet their incredible powers of creativity and imagination! I am looking forward to seeing what they will create.