Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

So sorry this is a day late.

This week's IA: PE
Next week's IA: Art
Following week's IA: Music (This is our last week of school.)

*Homework:
Hopefully you all saw the packet come home with your child yesterday. I sent home a packet with each child's name on it. Your child should write kind adjectives, phrases, or memories about each child in our Crew. I will then use these words to create an end-of-the-year gift for each student. In order for me to get all 25 of the gifts done, it is very important that I get these back no later than this Friday, May 24th. Please help your child remember to return it by then. Thanks so much for your help with this!

*Crew Breakfast and Portfolio Share:
Thank you, Jennifer for sending out the Signup Genius for our end-of-the-year breakfast. This will be on Tuesday, June 4th, from 9:00-10:00. This will also be the time that students will share their portfolios with parents. Please plan on attending. If you are not able to attend, please let me know. I know each child would love to have a parent here to share with.

*Expedition:
Our Crew will be creating a website to share with the world :) about wolves. Last week, Ms. Cari, Keanan's mom came in and taught us how to design and create a website. We are so excited to create this final produce for our Science Expedition. Be on the lookout for the link to our finished product.

 *Conflict Resolution
As we draw near to the end of the school year, tensions seem to run a bit high. We've been experiencing some conflicts in our Crew, so yesterday we did a restorative circle to help us learn how to deal with these conflicts when they arise. Each child had a chance to say what he or she thought about how to handle problems. Below is the chart we all created to help remind us what we agreed to. I was amazed by their deep thinking and creative problem solving techniques!

Monday, May 13th, 2013

I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day yesterday! I enjoyed a relaxing day with my family.

This week's IA: Music
Next week's IA: PE

Reader's Workshop
We are reading fairy tales. As we read, we're discussing the lesson that the fairy tale is teaching. We're also talking about characters and perspective. For example, since we're learning about wolves in expedition, we are examining how wolves are portrayed in fairy tales. This has been a great way in to talk about point of view and perspective.

Also, we are learning some great vocabulary words. Some students are even transferring the new vocabulary to other parts of the day. Last week, one student used the famine (a vocabulary word from reading) to describe what could happen to wolves if we destroy their habitat! I love when kids make those connections! Hopefully you're hearing your child use some of these new words in their conversations with you.

Writer's Workshop
One thing that we're working on in writing is third-person perspective when writing factual descriptions. This has been a challenge because most of us are used to using the words I, me, my, we, our, etc. in our writing. You will have a chance to see our factual descriptions about wolves very soon.

Math
We are almost done with our current unit. Later this week we'll begin the unit where we review addition and subtraction and learn more about multiplication and division. It would be a huge help for students to practice their addition and subtraction facts at home, as there isn't much time in class for this practice. As the concepts in math become more challenging, knowledge of these basic facts is vital.

Expedition
This week we will begin creating our class website about wolves. We will use this website as a way to educate the community about wolves and why we should care if they are endangered. We'll even have a guest speaker teach us about creating a website.