• Our theme this week in reading is "The Sea". The kids will be working on the strategy of comparing and contrasting objects by reading through nonfiction information about the coral reefs. We will also take a look at characteristics of myths. In doing so, we will explore terms such as protagonist and hyperboles.
• The kids took a pretest today over our new spelling words. Our lists contain words that make an "aw" sound. The spelling patterns of these words include: "a", "awe", "-ough", and "-al". The spelling sort and 2 menu items are due on Friday.
• In grammar we will work with pronouns and homophones. These tend to be very difficult for the kids -- even adults get confused with these at times. The kids will study when to use your/you're, their/they're/there, and it's/its. We will discuss that an apostrophe is never used with a possessive pronoun and when choosing the correct word, it is helpful to think about whether you are combining words or trying to show possession.
• In writing our focus will switch from nonfiction writing to fiction writing. Some of our writing prompts with our new unit will have the students write about themselves, while others direct them to work on fictional short stories, with a particular emphasis on creating vivid, believable characters. This week the kids will work to create a character and then put their character in different situations to determine how their character will respond.
• In math we will review adding/subtraction fractions with unlike denominators. We will also work to find equivalent fractions using pictures and the equivalent fraction rule (if the numerator and denominator of a fraction are multiplied by the same nonzero number, the result is a fraction that is equivalent to the original fraction). Later in the week we will work with changing fractions into decimals and comparing fractions. We have LOTS to cover! The kids will take Mad Minute tests on Wednesday and possibly Friday as well.
• We will spend this week finishing our individual glogs and then viewing each others' glogs to gain information about the 8 main explorers that our History Alive book covers. The kids will be taking notes off of the glogs that they view and we will compile this information into a packet that they will be able to study from. Our test over the explorers (Unit 5) will be in the beginning of next week. The kids will receive a study guide later this week with the exact date of the test. We will also record this date in our assignment notebooks once we have finished our glog research.
• PROBE books (Personal Research on Basically Everything) are now a monthly assignment. This is a multi-step research project that the kids have been working on since the beginning of the year. The majority of this will be done in the classroom. The only thing your child may need to do at home is some simple research using the safe-search engines on our LMC website. Ask your child about what topic he/she is going to research for this month. Their next PROBE entry is due by April 30th. ***Please note that this is for your child to do individually to show his/her research and expository writing skills***
• I think that covers everything! I hope everyone had a wonderful spring and let's all cross our fingers for some spring-like weather soon!!!!
