Sep 22-Oct 3rd Update

Thank you to all 4E parents! We had 100% participation and attendance at Student Led Conferences. I was a proud and happy teacher to watch students share their thoughts and ideas for their yearlong goals. I also received a lot of wonderful feedback from you about ways to help make the classroom run more smoothly.

A few things we have implemented due to your feedback:

•   Homework: All Students need to show their planner to a teacher upon leaving the class at the end of the day and need to have it signed by a parent at night. If your child is taking a picture with their ipad, this is fine but their planner still needs to be signed.
•  In the Math section, I will be listing specific Khan Academy skills students should be working on mastering.
• Literacy Letter Guidelines is added to every student’s Literacy Folder so you and they can always check to see what their literacy letter assignment is.

Please continue to contact Ms. Lauren (slauren@aisch.org) and myself (tchristina@aisch.org) if you have any questions, comments or would like to schedule some additional time to meet.

Announcements:

Thankfully, this is the last week with MAP testing.  The data we get is important and useful, but it sure does take up a lot of time! 

Tuesday, October 30; 1:30 pm: Science MAP Test

Wednesday, October 1st; 8:45-9:30: India Month Assembly

Thursday, October 2^nd: No School

Math:

With MAP testing, a day off, and the India Week Assembly, we are losing a lot of valuable instructional/class time this week!  For math, this will be a week where we deepen understanding and assess students on the following objectives:

·                Using drawings and manipulatives to show understanding of place value.

·                Comparing the values of numbers up to ten million.

·                Reading and writing numbers in standard and expanded form up to a ten million. 

Student can practice these skills on Khan Academy. There are four skills, I would like all students to begin exploring and hopefully master this week:

·       Place Value

·       Understanding Place Value

·       Understanding Whole Number Representatives

·       Rounding Whole Numbers

Reading Workshop

In reading, students should be developing detailed theories about the characters in their books and using evidence from the books to support their thinking.  We are encouraging students to take notes in their reading notebooks and to practice different skills very explicitly.

Reading Logs:

We continue to push students to read as much as possible, hoping that they are falling in love with books and applying the skills we are learning both in class and at home.  For the next two weeks, students will be expected to log their reading in a Reading Log and write two notes using reading strategies (Connect, Infer, Predict, Question).  At the end of next week, we will have a lesson about how to use our own logs to reflect on how our reading lives are going.  

This Week:

We will begin reading the novel  Rickshaw Girl which is a book that we use extensively in social studies.  It’s a book that reveals a great deal about life in Bangladesh.  It’s also a great book for our character studies. This week, we will look into analyzing our characters by:

·                Examining different, important objects in their lives.

·                Examining how secondary characters in the story treat the main characters and making inferences about the characters based on these observations

Literacy Letters:

We continue to use the Literacy Letters as a way to examine how students are doing with their “thinking work” in reading.  Last week, we modeled a literacy letter for the students in class, and gave them time to work, which really seemed to help a lot.  Please ask your child about their letter and response from their teacher but do not write your child’s letter. We want to see student thoughts, spelling, grammar, etc. We use this letter to help assess where to continue personalized instruction.

Writing Workshop:  The Arc of the Story

 Students continue to work on their realistic fiction stories.  This week we will have to important lessons where students will:

·                Brainstorm possible endings and plan a powerful ending for their stories.

·                Begin the revision process.

Social Studies:

We are still beginning our social studies unit!  This week, students will work collaboratively on a Google Presentation. This presentation will be great way for students to learn all of the landform vocabulary and begin to explore where these landforms are in South Asia.

Students will:

·                Reflect on the reasons that South Asia is an important region filled with many geographical wonders.

·                Define important landforms in South Asia including: mountain range, mountain pass, river system, tributary, delta, plateau, bay, mangrove forest, and peninsula.

·                Learn important search skills by researching landforms.

·                Identify the important landforms inside of South Asia.

·                Work collaboratively to create a Google Presentation, which includes the important landforms in South Asia.

Personalized Learning

All people have interests and passions; a huge goal I have as a teacher is to help students uncover their passions and help them to explore and learn through them.  This year, students will be expected to identify something they want to explore and complete a project on it.  On Friday, I will introduce these “Passion Projects” to students and give them a handout to help them brainstorm what they might like to do.  Since no one knows the students better than their parents, students will bring this document home over the weekend.   It is my hope that parents will discuss ideas with their children and encourage them to really “dream big” for their Passion Projects.