March 30th-April 2nd

Happy Birthday Spencer!

No School on Friday, April 3rd and all next week! Happy Spring Break!

This week...

There will be no spelling or poem this week. 

Reading/Writing

We will continue the unit on reading a variety of texts and writing about texts. We will have another reading marathon on Monday. The kids love this and they have built up such stamina for reading! What a difference from the beginning of the year! The NYS State ELA test will be the week after vacation. The work they have done all year in reading and writing has prepared them well. We have looked at examples of test essays, passages and have learned good test taking strategies. At this point, the students do not seem to feel stressed about the testing and I encourage you to let me know if you see any stress at home. 

Math

We completed the fraction unit and will spend this week working on geometry. 

Social Studies

We continued the United States unit by reading an American tall tale on Johnny Appleseed. This week, we will compare him to the real Johnny Appleseed-John Chapman.

March 23rd-March 27th

Happy Birthday Zachary!

This week...

**Spring pictures will be taken this Thursday, March 26th.

Reading

We will be continuing to work on reading a variety of texts. We have been working on "How to do our best reading". We will practice close reading and shared reading as we read both fiction and non-fiction. Students are continuing to read "just right" books independently. We have been having marathon Mondays where we are increasing the amount of silent reading time each week. We talked about having stamina and the students are really enjoying this! They got up to 45 minutes of silent reading last Monday! We're trying for 50 this week! We finished Petey as our read aloud and will start Island of the Blue Dolphins this week. 

Math

We will be finishing up the fraction unit this week. Our next unit is geometry. 

Writing

We are continuing the unit on writing about our reading. Students are working on using textual evidence in their writing. 

March 16th-March 19th

This week...

There will be no school on Friday, March 20th

Reading

We are working on close reading and answering multiple choice questions. The students worked in pairs to cover up the multiple choice answers. Then they read the question and predicted the answer. After that, they looked at the choices and picked the best one. We also discussed "distractor" answers. These are answers that are really close! We have been reading a book during Read Aloud called Petey by Ben Mikaelson. Petey was born with cerebral palsy in the 1920s, before doctors knew what is was or how to treat it, and the story traces his life. It has led to wonderful discussions about differences and tolerance! We also watched a short video clip called "Picking Up Butch" about a man with cerebral palsy who is picked up for each basketball game and football game at Middlebury College by players. We had a discussion on how Petey and Butch are alike and different and we'll be writing about it this week. It's an inspiring story! See below!

Math

We finished up chapter 9, Understanding Fractions. I decided not to give a chapter 9 test. Instead, students worked in pairs on an culminating activity for the chapter. Chapter 10 will continue with fractions. Here are some pictures of the kids playing a fraction game last week.

Writing

We are practicing writing about our reading. Students are learning how to use textual evidence in their writing.

March 9th-March 13th

What a busy and fun week! First we celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday with a visit from the Cat and the Hat and Thing 1 and Thing 2. We had a wonderful writing celebration and celebrated Tim and Payton's birthdays!

This week...

Reading and Writing
This week, we will be working on a unit that will combine reading and writing. We will be using a variety of articles and stories to practice shared reading and close reading. We will also be working on writing about reading. We are really enjoying the read aloud called Petey. It is about the life of a boy with cerebral palsy. The class is really learning a lot about acceptance and differences.

Math
We will be finishing up Unit 9 "Understanding Fractions" and will have a test on Friday.