March 12-16

Hi Families,

What a busy week! It was great seeing most of you either at Culver's Night or at Author's Breakfast. Thank you so much for showing support for our school and your child!

As state testing will be here sooner than we know it, we have begun talking about some test taking tips and what the tests will be like. We're hoping that talking about this and practicing beforehand will help alleviate some stress that any kind of test can cause. If your child is feeling overly nervous about these tests, let me know! The best thing we can do is help them feel confident going into the test.

Reminders/Updates

• Fang Reading Program: "First Base" was due Friday, March 9th. You can turn in each Fang guy with your child on the due date, or you can keep them and turn all of them in at once on April 20th. Here are the rest of the due dates:
• Second base: March 23rd
• Third base: April 6th
• Home plate: April 20th
• Our Knowledge-A-Thon (KAT) will be here before we know it! If you are  interested in volunteering, please sign up by clicking the link: 2018 Knowledge-A-Thon (KAT) Day

• If you would like to volunteer, you will need to have a background check on file. If you do not have one yet, it could take 3 weeks to get approved. 

• Portfolio Conferences are coming soon! If you have not yet, please sign up for conferences. The link to sign up is here.
• Our 4K teacher, Mrs. Krueger, recently went to a training in New York and asked that we share this with our NDLC families:

Loose Parts

Many of the sessions that I attended in New York last week explained that play with open-ended materials encourages a child’s imagination and deepens their creativity.  I am looking to transition our classroom from traditional toys to more open-ended materials. I am hoping families can help with donations of items you may have around your house or you may also consider an inexpensive donation to our class.   I will be sharing this list with our school staff and also my friends and family. If you have any family members that are ‘collectors’ please consider asking them for donations to our 4K class as well.

Below you will find a list of possible ideas of items that can be used for this type of play.  Really, any ‘loose parts’ we would love to add to our classroom.

Large plastic buttons perler beads shape blocks wooden cubes glass stones mini erasers matchsticks felt shapes foam numbers river rocks different sizes sticks Empty boxes (from shoe to refrigerator sizes) Tape (variety of types) Fabric (variety of sizes) Nature recycled materials paper tubes, papers, ribbons, caps, lids, wood scraps, wire, foam, cardboard

Upcoming Events

March 15: Yoga
March 16: Wear Green
March 16: Homeless Connections presentation at Assembly
March 16: Beauty and the Beast performance
March 19: Badger Sports Wear
March 20: Portfolio Conferences
March 22: Portfolio Conferences
March 28: Early Dismissal (11:30)
March 29: NO SCHOOL
March 30: NO SCHOOL

Curriculum Update

Math: We wrapped up Unit 4 this week by taking the test! The next unit that we will start focuses on area, perimeter, and fractions. We'll start by first determining what area and perimeter are and how to find them. Students often will get area and perimeter mixed up and forget which one is which. We'll talk about how you can find area and perimeter if you know the side length, or how we can find the side length if you know area or perimeter. You can help students see that we use this stuff outside of math class by talking about when you might need to find the perimeter (garden fences, bulletin board borders, window frames) and area (painting a wall, floor in a bathroom, ceiling tiles, the space a pool would take up). 

Writing: Our writers created some amazing pieces of writing in this last unit! I was impressed with how engaged students were and the quality and quantity of work they were able to accomplish! Next week we will be starting a new unit: test prep. We really are going to be focusing on making sure we answer exactly what the question asks and take evidence right from the text to answer it. Students will be typing their answers to short response questions as well. They will be expected to answer the question with TWO pieces of textual evidence and with correct punctuation and capital letters, as that is how they will be graded on the state test.

Word Study: This week we learned more about prefixes and suffixes -- specifically the suffixes -ly, -y, and -ty. When y is a suffix, it always makes the long E sound. We will be wrapping up this unit (finally!) next week and taking the test. 

Reading: This past week we began our test prep unit. Students have been learning SO many test taking skills already. Here are some we learned for multiple choice questions:

• After reading a question, cover up the answers and see if YOU can guess the answer first. Then see if your answer is an option.

• Read ALL of the answers before deciding on one

• Eliminate obvious wrong answers

• ALWAYS go back in the text to make sure you can support your answer.

• Test makers might try to trick you with wording. Lesson can also be moral or central message.

• TRY your best!

• Take your time!

• ANNOTATE---jot and highlight parts that you know are important

Students have been doing SUCH a great job! We've done a lot of practice this past week with fiction passages. This coming week we will start looking at narrative nonfiction. These tend to be biographies and are tricky for students because they not only read it like an information book but they should also read it like a story. We will practice this and consider ALL of our skills we already know! Students are having a lot of fun trying to NOT let the test makers trick us. :)

Content: Students have been busy researching their Civil Rights leader or movement. Ask your child what they have learned! To showcase all of this new knowledge, students will be typing a biography about their person and decorating a poster to teach our classmates. I know students will be excited and interested to learn more about the brave and historic leaders of this movement!

Know that you can always contact me with any questions or concerns. Have a wonderful weekend!

Best,

Jenny