We made it through our first week back. The kids did a great job transitioning back into school mode. This week is shortened for them due to our teacher institute on Tuesday. We have a lot to pack into 4 days. Here is a look at our week ahead:
* Nathan is our MVP! We can't wait to hear more about him.
* You have probably heard that we have a high school student teacher! Her name is Ms. Lotzer and she will be with us Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons. Ms. Lotzer goes to Buffalo Grove high school and is a senior. We used our inference skills to learn that she is on the swimming and polo teams, she is a life guard and teaches swim lessons, she loves sea animals, and her favorite color is blue. We are excited to have her here!
* The biographies from March were fantastic. We will make fact cards to go along with the puppets and these will hang in the hallway for all to see. The new genre for April is poetry. Hopefully your child has shown or told you the assignment. This will be due May 1st.
* In reading we have been working with making inferences. When we take what we know from our background knowledge (schema) and add it to evidence around us, we can make an inference. The kids will practice making more inferences this week without the text. We will focus on real world examples so that the kids have a solid understanding of how it works. We will being using text with our skills next week.
* The kids are typing up their final drafts of the James and Giant Peach papers. We will begin our new unit in WEX on Thursday. This unit has the kids create a believable character. We will continue to explore the impact of strong verbs, showing details, focused moments, setting, and evidence/dialogue. However, this time we will demonstrate our knowledge of these important elements through fiction stories rather than literary analysis.
* In math, we will review equivalent fractions on Monday. The rest of the week will be spent finishing up our fractions unit. We will still cover finding a whole (or the ONE) from a fractional part, and multiplying fractions by whole numbers (we will use a number line to help us with this). On Friday, the kids will take a practice test that will serve as a study guide, Monday we will review, and the final test over the unit will be on Tuesday.
* Our History Alive unit is quickly coming to an end. We will go over our study guides on Monday and then the kids will take their test over the unit on Wednesday. The test will require the kids to recognize important details from each of the colonies we have learned about (Roanoke, Jamestown, and Plymouth).
* We will begin our new science unit on Thursday! This spring we will cover earth's changing surface. This unit is extremely hands on--just like our matter unit was. This week we will take a tour of our school grounds looking for evidence of change and discuss the period of time involved for the changes we observe.
* Have a great week! ~ Mrs. Galazka
