The Last Full Week of January

Did everyone make it out of the cold? We are almost done with January! This is another short week for the kids. We have lots to do with the 4 days of class we have. Here's a look ahead:

This is a review week for reading. Therefore, we will have no new strategies or vocabulary words. We will spend the week reviewing strategies we have learned during the last 5 weeks such as: comparing/contrasting, main idea vs details, author's purpose and identifying imagery and figurative language in literature. The kids will take a Unit test on Friday. We will also begin our ISAT prep and review test taking strategies. The kids continue to work with long responses to the reading passages they read. Each response includes their answer to the question, evidence from the story to back up their answer, and a connection to the passage.

There is only one list for spelling this week. All words on the list are from previous weeks in this unit. The kids will take a test on Friday where they will need to identify which word(s) in a sentence are spelled incorrectly. They will not have to correctly spell the word themselves.

Grammar time will be spent on reviewing all we've learned about verbs. We have covered action verbs, past tense verbs, linking/helping verbs, and irregular verbs. There is tons to review!

This week in math will be spent on long division. The kids became comfortable with division vocabulary last week such as: quotient, dividend, and divisor. This week we will apply our division estimation skills to help us get started on long division problems. We will work with a partial-quotient strategy which is very different than the way most of us were taught. Please be patient with your child and have your child "show what he/she knows" on the study links. This will help me get a true gage of how the kids are doing with the concept. We will also be covering traditional long division methods. I included a powerpoint and some division math games on our blog so that the kids can have some extra practice. Multiplication skills definitely make long division easier. Please encourage your child to practice their fact triangles, mad minute tests, or online games to sharpen skills. Fridays will now be spent on the problem solving process. We will not only work with different strategies to solving problems, but on explaining our thinking and using mathematical language as well.

In science we continue to work with circuits. The kids are doing a great job with the 4 critical points of the simple circuit. This week they will study the different parts of a light bulb and use their knowledge of circuits to see if they can solve broken circuit scenarios. We will be taking a quiz on simple circuits on Thursday! The kids have a labeled picture and our circuit investigations to help them study.

In writing, we will work with sensory details. The kids will begin with a sensory detail chart that helps them organize their thoughts about a certain setting. They will then be asked to describe a time in that setting using all of the sensory details that they can. This will bring in details about smells, tastes, texture, sounds, and sights to the reader. We will also work on connecting a character's actions to his/her feelings. For example, if a character is nodding eagerly, while jumping up and down, you can tell that this character is excited about the conversation. The kids will work on identifying examples in text as well as creating their own details in their writing.

Book orders have been placed and we should receive them later this week or the very beginning of next week.

Congrats to May Joy on her hard work in the science fair! Her experiment with electricity was wonderful and engaging for us!

As always, if you have questions or concerns, please let me know! Have a great week!