January

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful winter break. Before break, the students worked hard on research presentations. Many parents and family members attended the gallery walk on December 21st. It was a great success. The students also finished up their division unit with a final test which will be coming home this week.

In social studies, we will be finishing the fur trade unit this week. The students will take the final test on Monday. After that, we will switch over to our next science unit.

In math, we will begin unit four which is all about problem solving, order of operations, and equations.

In writer's workshop, we will be starting a literary essay and in reader's workshop, we will begin our poetry unit.

Our library day has been moved to Friday.

The second quarter ends on January 12.

STAR testing for reading and math will take place next week, on January 9 & 10 at 11:45am. I will also be assessing student reading progress through running records during the next couple of weeks.

Enjoy the pictures from the research fair!

Expanded Notation Division

November

Hello Families!

I hope you all are looking forward to the Thanksgiving break! This past week, students finished up their multiplication unit with the final test. Next week, we will start our division unit. Please make sure your child continues to practice his/her multiplication and division facts in preparation for the new unit.

We also finished up our glacier unit in science. Students had a lot of fun making glacier dictionaries as their final projects. The dictionaries should be coming home with your child on Monday along with the unit 2 math test. Next, we move on to our next social studies unit about the first people of Wisconsin.

**Please keep in mind that any test or project that your child does not complete to their full potential can be retaken/redone. They just need to let me know and we can schedule a time for a retake.

In language arts, students are working with nonfiction for both reading and writing. In reading, kids are doing research projects about weather events in small groups. They are learning to take notes and synthesize information from sources. They will present a slideshow with their group to teach to the class next week. In writing, students are finishing up their first opinion essay and will soon be switching to the persuasive essay.

Here is a picture of some students on our read in and pajama day yesterday!

Quarter 2

Today is the first day of the second quarter. First quarter report cards will be sent home soon.

Today's field trip to the Riversedge Nature Center was a success! Thank you to Ms. Vogl and Mr. Lozoff for joining us! The kids got to explore all kinds of landforms created by the glaciers thousands of years ago. See below for some pictures from our day.

In science this week, we will continue to finish up our glacier unit. The students will be making a glacier dictionary in class.

In math, students will learn how to do two digit by two digit multiplication. Please have them use one of the methods taught in class. The "shortcut" method is really not to be mastered until 5th grade. The final unit test for multiplication will be next Friday or the following Monday. 

In writing, we began the opinion essay unit. Students are currently working on brainstorming ideas for their essays using a thesis and reasons.

In reading, we began our nonfiction unit. Right now, the kids are just getting familiar with nonfiction text structures and how to navigate a nonfiction text to learn something new. Soon they will move in to researching a type of weather event with groups using nonfiction text sets.

Just a reminder that this Wednesday is an early release day at 1:50 for the students.

Hello Everyone!

Last week, we had a celebration to recognize all of the hard work the students put into finishing their first narrative writing pieces. The students shared their favorite parts from their stories while enjoying pretzels and juice. This week, they are applying what they learned from their first piece and are writing a new narrative completely on their own!

In science, the kids have been working on their projects. They got to choose to create a storybook, poster, or Power Point to share what they learned about erosion, weathering, and deposition this month. They are learning to search for pictures on Britannica Imagequest to incorporate into their projects. The project is due this Thursday, October 26. It will be completed in class.

We have begun our multiplication unit in math. Please allow students to use the methods taught through our Math Expressions curriculum. They will not be taught the "shortcut" method for multiplication until the end of the unit.

This Wednesday, the students will take their final reading assessment. They will need to use details from a story to describe characters, character change, symbolism, and theme. These are all concepts that we have been discussing during our Tiger Rising unit.

Have a great week!

Hello!

In October, we are wrapping up many of our beginning units of the year.

Writing- Students are typing their final drafts of their first Narrative Essays this week. We will have a celebration on Friday for all of the hard work they have done in writing. Each student will get to share their favorite part of their piece with the class.

Reading- Students are finishing up their character study. They are learning to respond to their reading on a daily basis to grow ideas about characters. On the final reading assessment, students will read a short story and need to explain what kind of person the main character is, how that character changes, and what is the life lesson learned from the story. We have been studying these topics in class. Students are encouraged to read books around their individual reading levels to make the largest gains in reading this year.

Word Work- The kids each have their own word work list based on their spelling inventory level. They sort words based on a pattern each week. They have also been introduced to our word wall. They will learn 5 words per week which will be posted on the classroom word wall. Students are expected to be able to spell these words correctly in their everyday writing. We will begin to write these each week in the assignment notebook.

Math- Students are finishing up unit 1. The test will be on Thursday, October 12. Students received an optional study guide on Monday to work on throughout the week. There is a mandatory study guide from the workbook, which will be homework on Wednesday. The test will include writing numbers in different forms, adding and subtracting large numbers, rounding, estimating, and two step word problems.

Science- We had a great time on our walking field trip to the park last Friday! The kids will continue to study erosion, weathering, and deposition on Discovery Education this week. See photos below!

Week 3

We had a great week this week. It was our fist week of RtI. My class worked on the nonfiction, current events, reading site called Newsela. The students read an article aloud and silently, mark the text and vocabulary, and take quizzes online. We have class discussions about different reading strategies. The kids will also be participating in fiction book clubs during this time. We will also continue to work on building multiplication proficiency. I will be working with small groups to support the math curriculum during this time as well.

The students created three dimensional characters for their realistic fiction stories in writing. Next week, they will create plot lines and write scenes for their stories. In reading, the students learned to read intensely and choose good fit books. Next week, they will learn retell not just chronologically but as a synthesis including the background story. They will also focus on characters desires and obstacles. In word work, the students learned how to do a standard word sort, freestyle sort, and speed sort. The week after next, students will be completing sorts at their individual levels and learning 5 word wall words per week.

In math, the students continued to work on reading and rounding large numbers. Next week, they will work on adding, subtracting and estimating with large numbers. There will be a quiz on Wednesday the 27th.

In social studies this week, students will need to bring an artifact from home. This can be any object from the past. They will learn to question primary sources with these artifacts. They will be coming home with flashcards to study for the test on Friday (the 29th) which will be about historians and learning about the past.

On Friday afternoon, the kids did a team building activity called Save Fred. They had a ton of fun working with a partner to get a gummy worm through a gummy life saver that was trapped under a cup using only paper clips.