This month, we are studying Oregon Geography. We are learning about the different regions, climate, landforms and important facts that make Oregon a great state. Did you know that Milk is our state drink? Ask your child to navigate the site http://kids.traveloregon.com for you. We did a scavenger hunt last week on that site and there is so much more to explore! We will find the link on the side of our blog under Oregon Geography. Monday, January 23, we are making salt maps of the state of Oregon. This will be a fun, but messy project! You will see the final project coming home later in the month.
Spelling scores this past week were up again. We have been spending time in class studying and practicing the word patterns as well as asking kids to take their spelling study at home more seriously. Spelling City is a great site to use for practice at home. We update the list of words weekly so a current list is available each Monday. Helping your child be on the hunt for their spelling words in the books they read each week is another great idea for spelling practice.
In math, we just completed our unit on Multiplication and Division. At this point, the kids have learned about the difference between multiplication and division and their inverse relationship. They’ve learned vocabulary including: product, quotient, divisors, factors, multiples, and dividend. Our students worked in partners to create and solve multiplication and division story problems. They also practiced solving story problems by first figuring out if they needed to multiply or divide. Solving these story problems is still difficult for some as it takes time to learn how to identify the best way to solve each one. We will continue to work on this concept and review it again later in the year. We will continue testing basic multiplication facts regularly and expect that kids are studying multiplication facts at home throughout the year.
We take timed multiplication tests at least 3 days during the week. Each child is working at his or her own pace and has six minutes to demonstrate accuracy of the facts at each level (1′s, 2′s, 3′s, 4′s, 0-4 review and so on). When a child scores 97% or better on one level, he/she moves on to the next level. We have been sending home practice tests and flashcards with kids who have not passed a level after three attempts. They are welcome to take home these materials at any time, though. We send home the timed tests after they are graded and recorded in class. Consistent practice at home is an important part of a student’s success with mastering the multiplication facts.
Our next math unit is Geometry-measuring perimeter and area. Just a reminder that we have a link to Math Investigations on our blog. This is the math curriculum we use here at Stafford.
As writers, we started the new year learning and enjoying comic strips and graphic novels. These are two very popular genres for kids to read. It is a great way to get back into the writing process after a long vacation. The kids loved the project and were very engaged in looking at the text elements that make this genre effective. They created final written comic strips (many without the humor, but much creativity), based on what they had learned in the first week of studying this genre. These will be on display in the classroom for a couple of weeks and then we will send them home. This week brings a review of writing modes and the steps in the writing process. We will begin our animal study and research projects in about two weeks. More to come on that soon.
Last December, we finished our first whole-class literature study. We read James and the Giant Peach. We learned a lot about character development and author’s theme during the reading. We completed several journal responses and made some comparisons with other text we were reading. The kids LOVED this book and the discussions that followed our reading each day were deep and thoughtful. This week, we are starting a new book. As a class, we will be reading Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Some kids have read this or even have seen the movie. That familiarity will not interrupt our class study as we will be studying more character development along with developing thematic thesis statements so that students could later write essays about their thematic ideas. A big part of this study will be learning how to use specific information from the text to support our ideas and opinions. You can help your child understand this concept further by asking them to go back in text you are reading at home to support ideas they have. Ask them to “Show me where you read something that makes you think that”.
Conferences are coming up at the end of February and early March. We will keep you updated on dates/times of conferences as it gets closer. As a school, we post days/times on the same day to make it fair on families to sign up. We will be doing online sign ups again.
