Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of January 15, 2018

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 22: weekly reading logs due

Tuesday, January 23: Home Link is due

Wednesday, January 24: early release

Thursday, January 25: math journal pages are due

Friday, January 26: Home Link is due/ SpellingCity is due / report cards go home with students

Monday, January 29: weekly logs are due

General News and Announcements

Monthly Reading Calendars

Some readers have been offered to try out a Monthly Reading Calendar for this second half of January!  Those students brought home the calendar with a written explanation of how to use it.  We talked about it at length in class, and I intend to offer this option to more and more students as the winter moves on!

Academic Updates

Writing Workshop

Wow!  We have come a long way from where we left off in December!  Students have strengthened their writing by learning about and using the following writing concepts and moves:

• transitions to start new paragraphs
• strong ending sentences
• unpacking evidence by including a sentence to show readers how the evidence connects to their ideas
• transitions to “unpack” evidence
• using information from a survey or an interview
• using a statistic
• using a quote
• strong introduction paragraphs
• meaningful ending paragraphs
• anticipating a counter-argument and using a rebuttal sentence
• revising with a checklist
• revising by assigning ourselves specific jobs
• editing for spelling by reading our piece backwards
• finding words in a dictionary by using base words

And today, we started typing the final drafts!

Reading Workshop

Holy cow, we have been doing tough stuff in reading workshop.  We have been piloting a new nonfiction unit called, Reading the Weather, Reading the World.  As we research extreme weather, students have been trying to identify different text structures authors use within a text, such as compare/contrast, chronological order, problem/solution, and cause & effect.  Then, we use certain note-taking techniques as we read, and that helps us to determine the big ideas and supporting details.  And...it works.  It’s hard, but it works!  Who knew?

See how Caroline has found a way to write down the main details about dust devils, and then she used a Venn diagram to compare and contrast fire whirls and waterspouts!

Above, Kyra used a cause & effect format to take notes on the causes of hurricanes.

Below, she writes the steps in chronological order of how a hurricane starts.

Of course, not all students are working at this level of understanding, but I can assure you that they are all taking risks and practicing this work as a group, with a partner, and/or in their research teams.

Math

In math over the past two weeks students learned to convert metric units of mass (grams and kilograms) and metric units of liquid volume (liters and milliliters)  In addition, students have learned to multiply large numbers using partial products. This is an invaluable algorithm for students to grasp, as it gives them a strong foundation for understanding the meaning behind multiplying large numbers. Becoming proficient with this algorithm goes well beyond the rote memorization of steps.

Theme

This week in our Mystery Science unit called Energizing Everything students explored how roller coasters use height as a form of energy. They had fun building marble roller tracks and testing how various release heights impact the speed and distance the marble will travel. More experiments along this line to come next week.