Mayberry-McFarland Weekly News

for the week of February 26, 2018

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 5: weekly reading logs due

Tuesday, March 6: Home Link is due

Wednesday, March 7: Early release

Thursday, March 8: math journal pages are due

Friday, March 9: Home Link is due/ SpellingCity is due

Monday, March 12: weekly logs are due

Academic Updates

Writing Workshop

We are big-time into our literary essay unit!  This is my second-favorite unit of the year (poetry is #1).  I love this unit, because kids not only demonstrate sophistication in their writing, but they also show sophistication in their reading.  We loop back to many of the concepts from our earlier reading unit about characters: thinking deeply about the character’s traits, how the character changes, what the character learns or realizes, and identifying themes in a text.  Some students might also investigate the author’s craft through the use of figurative language.  Lots of writing progress happens during this unit!

Reading Workshop

I offered a monthly reading calendar to all of our readers for the month of March!  Most students are choosing to try it out after hearing feedback from others who have been using them in January and February.  Please expect your child to share it with you and explain how it works.  One change is that parents need to initial the calendar each day the child reads.  This helps to keep the kids on track, as there is no weekly reading expectation, just a monthly goal.

    In class, we are working on a historical fiction unit.  Mrs. Angela Campbell, our literacy specialist, will be working on this unit with us.  She and I are making plans to have book clubs in which students will work toward meeting standards from the Common Core related to speaking and listening.  These skills will be a priority for language arts instruction K-5 over the next few years.

    In addition, our fourth grade team is so excited to be hosting author Andrew Clements in April!  I ordered as many of his books as my budget would allow for our classroom library, and the Andrew Clements shelf is completely cleared off-- everybody wants one!  We have a chart in the classroom where kids can write their names next to the titles of the books they read.  This serves a number of purposes: to celebrate the accomplishment of reading some of these great stories, to see which books are popular, and to see who has read what so we can get recommendations!  I don’t have all of his books; he has tons out there!  Please encourage your child to seek out his other titles at PML or from other sources.  Here is a link to Andrew Clements’ website with all of his titles: https://www.andrewclements.com/books.

Math

In math this week students continued to manipulate fractions and mixed numbers using addition and subtraction. Also, students had an introduction to gathering data and creating line plots to show their findings.

    Just before vacation students had a little fun with mathballs! Enjoy the action.

Theme

This week students started a new research project where each student selected a famous scientist to learn about. They are using books and online resources to gather information for a final project. Building in student choice, each child will have the option to select one of four types of final projects. All of this ties into the new read aloud being shared with students titled, The Fourteenth Goldfish, by Jennifer Holm.