The Week in Review

9/30-10/6

Getting ready for school pictures

READING-We read Destiny's Gift by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley. This piece of realistic fiction explores the question, Why is volunteering good for a community and its people. Students practices making text-to-text connections to better understand the main character. We also began working in small, guided reading groups. Each small group is comprised of students working towards a similar reading goal. Each group read realistic fiction describing situations where the main characters worked together to help their communities.



How you can help at home- While watching movies or TV, or reading books, ask your child to recall key details. Then ask, "Does that make you think of anything similar in your own life?" Guide your child to making inferences, or logical guesses, about the characters using their own similar life experiences as a tool.

Common Core State Standards

WRITING- Mrs. P came to our class this week to introduce students to WriteSmart, a tool found on the thinkcentral website, and part of the Journey's curriculum. WriteSmart is a platform where students can respond to texts using a variety of word-processing tools. Students answer prompts comparing/contrasting two similar texts. They highlight text, take notes, write, and edit papers before submitting them online for a grade. This week has been a practice week where we become familiar with the login process, and with the available tools. This platform will support students in preparing for the SBA.

Mrs. P

How you can help at home- in the weeks to come, begin looking for opportunities to help you child access thinkcentral at home where they can begin drafting responses to prompts about our texts.



MATH- We have begun taking timed tests to help us memorize our basic multiplication facts up to 12 X 12.  We have been experimenting with a precursor to the distributive property of multiplication called the fives shortcut. Using this shortcut, students have been solving word problems involving multiplication and division. Check out yesterday's post for the Homework Helper tutorial.

How you can help at home-Check your child's homework every night. Most homework will be completed in class, but students take home their papers for parental review before handing them in class the next day. This allows parents to become familiar with the concepts being taught. As always, encourage your child to keep using those multiplication flash cards.

Common Core State Standards

MISC- Our school walk-a-thon was today!  The sun came out, the music was great, and we had a wonderful time at our annual fund raiser. I challenged the students to walk more laps than me, and three of them did! Congratulations, #5. #10, and #12.

Students, this week you learned to use WriteSmart. You'll be composing papers and uploading them for grading just like students do in college. What is one discovery you made using WriteSmart that excited you most? What is one thing you still need to practice in order to master this tool?



Added bonus- check out our principal's mad dancing skills. Mr. L busted out the moves during this morning's brain break. We ran/danced to Seahawks Town Funk.


Untitled from Jannette Rotz on Vimeo.