Another snowy start to the week, but hopefully with warmer temperatures, we will finally have a chance to get outside to get some fresh air for recess. Here is a look at our week ahead:
* A HUGE thank you goes to Mrs. Kim, Mrs. Roberts, Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Lira, and Mrs. Manukian!!!! The kids had a great time at our Valentine's Day party! Who doesn't love a good craft, yummy food, and fun games? Thank you for all of the time you spent planning and putting on our party!
* Six Flags 6 Hour Reading is due on Friday!!! There won't be any late submissions accepted this year. Please make sure your child's log is turned in by the deadline!
* There will be no Weekly Folders this week due to the shortened week.
* In reading we are still working on our long responses to passages. The kids are getting comfortable using the CEIEIO format (and some of them like to sing to Old McDonald to start off, which is fine!). We will continue to practice these during the next two weeks before ISATs. Our goal is to get the kids comfortable with different types of questions, picking out examples from the text, and connecting or giving their own opinion about the information. We will also be reviewing the difference between tall tales, fables, legends, and folk tales this week as well.
* In writing our focus will be on dialogue. The kids will work with using dialogue to show actions and feelings. We will experiment with different speech tags to show emotion. We will also do quite a bit of work with the rules for punctuating dialogue. This will be something that the kids will be responsible for when writing now. We need to remember to capitalize the first word of the quotation, put quotation marks around words that are being said, and start a new paragraph when a new person is speaking. It will take some practice, but they can do it!
* In math we will continue to work on different types of problem solving. A handout explaining the various strategies and the written response went home with your child on Friday to review. We will continue to practice writing out the steps we did and why we took them. We will also strive to show all of our work and label our answers! In terms of our Chicago Math program, we will learn about coordinate grids and cover double digit divisors (in division). It is so very important that the kids practice their math facts and their skills. Ixl.com is a great place to review basic facts. I also suggest that the kids work on finding perimeter and area, finding volume, mean/median/mode/range, and probability. These would all be great practice for the testing that we have in the next few weeks!
* The kids finished up their science experiments in electricity last week and worked on a study guide for the test. We will take our test on Wednesday in class. We will then spend some time reviewing items that may be on the ISAT tests such as animal classification, solar system, simple machines, and light, color, sound. The kids will have chance to see a practice test. We will talk about thinking about the answer choices and narrowing down the choices using our common sense.
* I know I have referenced the ISAT's a few times in this blog--that time of year is coming! We will finalize our schedule later this week and I will give you more information as it comes. For right now here are some things to know: the kids will take 8 tests (3 reading, 3 math, 2 science); they will never have more than one long response portion of a test to do in one day; there are practice websites on our blog--check out Rocking the ISAT's; we will review in class during the next 2 weeks; and your child is going to do great! The practice that we do in class is just so that the kids can be confident during testing and show off all that they can on the tests.
* Have a great week! ~ Mrs. Galazka
