Mystery Reader

This week, MY parents were the mystery readers! How amusing to the children that Ms. Perlman is a real person outside of school with parents!

My dad read a couple chapters of one of my favorite books from when I was kid, that he read me over and over, The Witches.

Weekly Update- March 29

This week we began our unit on measurement, studied prefixes, and completed the book My Father's Dragon. We also began our science unit on motion and force.

The kids were VERY excited to have beaten me in our new teacher vs. class behavior contest. They elected to have a picnic today for lunch as their reward.

Next week...

Is the week before Spring Break!!

Math

This week we worked on how to properly measure with a ruler or yardstick. We also made sure we know which measuring tool is appropriate for measuring different distances.

We will continue learning about measurement. Our focus will be perimeter next week.

We will do the Everyday Math lessons and supplement this with extra practice.

ELA

We are going to spiral back to our lessons on synonyms next week and incorporate antonyms into our study. We will continue working on persuasive writing as well.

Reading

We are going to work on our summarizing reading skills next week. Our goal will be able to summarize what we have read: main characters and the setting, what the character wanted, what the conflict was, and how it was resolved. The goal for summary is to be able to tell the main ideas of the story in a short way.

Spelling

We will continue working with vowel teams next week. Our vowel teams will say the long o sound: oa, oe, and ow.

Science

So far in science we understand that things are only in motion if a force acts upon it. We understand that a force is a push or a pull, and that things can move at different speeds. The kids have caught onto all of this very quickly.

Next week we will continue to learn about motion, but our focus will be friction. We will test on Thursday, and a study guide will go home on Tuesday to study with.

Weekly Updates - March 22

This week we wrapped up our unit on fractions, our unit on civics, we began making predictions using My Father's Dragon, and started learning about prefixes.

Next week...

Math

Chapter 9 in Everyday Math revolves around measuring length. The ideas of metersticks, yardsticks, area, and perimeter will be introduced.

Reading

Our current reading skill is making predictions. We are reading My Father's Dragon as a class read-aloud to practice this skill.

Spelling

We are working with words that have the vowel teams oi and oy next week. This will be taught whole group and integrated into centers.

ELA

We will continue to work with prefixes next week. This will be done whole group and integrated into centers.

Writing

We are continuing persuasive writing next week. We will also start to connect persuasive writing to advertising.

Science

We will begin our unit on motion and force next week.

Civics Vocabulary Flashcards

Flashcards to use to study social studies words!!

http://quizlet.com/21162003/civics-flash-cards/

Weekly Updates March 15

We had a fun day today! We did M&M fraction math, finished our class read-aloud (Frindle) , and we had High Touch High Tech come today.

Next week...

Math

We will continue learning about fractions.

The big focus is that fractions are part of a whole.

We are also working on identifying equivalent fractions.

We will test on fractions on Friday, March 22.

Language Arts

We are working on prefixes starting next week.

We will learn the meaning and identify prefixes such as re-, un-, co-, mis-, dis-, bi-, tri-, to name a few. Knowing our prefixes is really helpful in figuring out the meaning of new words.

Reading

We are going to start working on making predictions in reading. This connects to our previous skill of inferring, as predicting is inferring what will happen next.

We will be reading My Father's Dragon to help us make predictions as a class.

Spelling

Our spelling list will consist of multisyllabic words that have ea, ee, or ey in one of the syllables.

Social Studies

We will finish our civics unit this week. Our final topics will be capitals and Jimmy Carter.

Our test is on Wednesday.

Science

Today we had High Touch High Tech do a lesson on force and motion. We will start science late next week.

Writing

We have been working on persuasive writing, and we will move to opinion writing.

Have a great St. Patrick's Day weekend!

Equivalent Fractions Game

Today we played the Equivalent Fractions Matching Game to help us understand equivalent fractions.

Charlie and Sam

Luke and Sophia

Contraction Review Game

Here is a fun game for practicing contractions at home!

http://www.vocabulary.co.il/contractions/primary/fill-it-in-contractions-game/

AR 1,000 Point Pizza Picnic!!

Please enjoy the pictures from our pizza picnic!

We earned our reward for meeting a class goal of 1,000 points on AR!

MES Talent Show

The talent of the children at MES is unbelievable! I was so impressed by every performance, which included some of OUR kids!

Jia performed like a professional on the piano, Margaret showed off her culture in her fun Irish dance performance, and Lauren danced in a very creative glow stick dance!

Hayden, Mollie, and Spencer did a great job participating in the Half Time Show.

Here are the few pictures I was able to snag with my phone that actually turned out decently!

Jia playing Fur Elise on the piano.

Lauren after the 3:00 show.

Margaret before the 3:00 show.

Lauren's group dancing.

Weekly Updates March 1

Can you believe it is MARCH? Ready for the weather to match the month!

If you check the posts below you will see pictures of some of the learning that went on this week! We have been working on homophones, how-to writing, collecting and using data, and Martin Luther King, Jr. this week.

Next week...

Math

Our math test on chapter 7 will be on Tuesday. We did the review today in class, which I sent home with them to use to study.

On Wednesday we will begin chapter 8, which is about fractions.

Language Arts

This week we talked about homophones - these are words that sound the same but are spelled differently. This is different than homonyms. Homonyms are words that sound/are spelled the same but mean different things. I know a couple parents were confused on the difference. We are learning homophones.

For example main/mane are homophones. They sound the same but are spelled differently.

Left/left are homoyms. They are the same word, but can mean different things (the past tense of leave, the opposite of right.)

We will continue to reinforce homophones over the next few weeks.

We will be working next week on compound words.

Writing

Next week we will wrap up our how-to writing. We have been practicing in our journals, in centers, and will finish our writing piece early next week.

We will then move onto persuasive writing. Don't be surprised if your children become extra persuasive!

Reading

My focus currently is on teaching them how to use non-fiction books and identify non-fiction text features. I have been emphasizing this when we read for social studies, in centers, and in reading groups. I will begin working on predicting in reading soon.

Spelling

This week our pattern was words with the ai or ay vowel teams - these sounds say the "long a" sound.

Next week our words will revolve around the "long" e sound vowel teams - ea, ee, ey.

Sidenote - Trick "Red" words from the beginning of the year on are on the back of the planner. Please continue to pick some each week to practice at home to foster retention of these spellings.

Social Studies

Next week we will be continuing to discuss MLK, segregation, and integration in social studies.

We will also be presenting our American Hero Projects.

Reminders

American Hero projects are due on Monday, March 4.

Homework Planner must be signed in the reading section every week. Your child is not receiving credit if you do not initial the section where you record his or her reading.

Friday, March 8 is a half day.

Mystery Reader

Thank you to Hayden's dad, Thayne Conrad, for being our mystery reader this afternoon!

You can tell from the picture you were a very enthusiastic guest!



Dirt Puddin' How-To-Writing

We have been working on "how-to" writing skills during ELA. We've been learning the importance of giving LOTS of steps and details and including transition words (ask your kids about Ms. Perlman's peanut butter and jelly how-to lesson.)

We had an edible assignement this week! We made dirt pudding cups (pudding, oreo crumbles, gummy worms) and we wrote down the instructions as we did each step.

We will do our final drafts of this next week to publish!

Jeremy working on his dirt puddin' how-to directions.

Lauren getting a taste of the dirt puddin'

Catherine is crumbling cookies for her dirt pudding.



Long Jump Olympics

Here are some pictures of the class measuring their arm spans for math. We used our arm span measurements to create a line plot, frequency chart, and bar graph of our class arm span lengths.

We also found the mode and the median of our data.

We also did a long jump olympics to practice measuring with a tape measurer and practice finding the median of a data set.

We measured our long jumps and found the median, maximum, and minimum of our data.

Jia is measuring Forrest's arm span.

Sage is measuring Caleb's arm span.

Archer is acting as "line judge" as Forrest gets ready for his long jump.