Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of January 22, 2018

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, January 29: weekly reading logs due

Tuesday, January 30: Home Link is due

Wednesday, January 31: early release

Thursday, February 1: math journal pages are due

Friday, February 2: Home Link is due/ SpellingCity is due

Monday, February 5: weekly logs are due

General News and Announcements

Report Cards

Your fourth-grader will bring home her/his first semester report card today!  The grades summarize achievement from the beginning of the school year through now.  We will schedule parent/teacher conferences for the end of March/beginning of April.

Wellness Awareness

Here are GMS ⅘, we have a long history of organizing a staff wellness afternoon, and this year it’s scheduled for next Wednesday.  I’d like to bring a small piece of wellness awareness to both classes of students next week.  We will be learning how to read and understand nutrition labels, and we’ll learn about fiber, sugar, and sodium.  

    Please support this work by sending in empty food containers that show a nutrition label, such as granola bar boxes, juice containers, yogurt containers, mac and cheese boxes, etc.  If you can send them in on Monday, that would be so helpful.

    In addition, Wednesday will be One-Ingredient Wednesday!  Students who wish to participate will try to bring in snacks that have only one ingredient (or as close to one ingredient as possible).

Academic Updates

Writing Workshop

Essays are done!  Students typed them, we’ll print soo, and then I’ll score them.  Up next: a modified informational unit where students will write about an area of personal expertise, using different text structures.

Reading Workshop

Students worked hard this week to create teaching tools about their subtopics.  We set the criteria for the teaching tools together, and then students went to work creating them.  Friday, we also set criteria for a strong presentation, as both presenters and listeners.  Then, all groups presented.  See photos below!

Math

In math this week students continued their work with determining the area of a rectangles and rectilinear shapes. They also worked on multi-step (3 or 4 steps!) story problems involving addition, subtraction and multiplication. This is where all the learning around computation really gets a heavy workout!

Theme

Have you noticed your fourth grader taking a particular interest in chain reaction machines? Our science lessons this week may be to blame! Students worked on how chain reaction machines work, and how stored energy, involving height, play a major role in these fun inventions.