Dear Families,
Thank you to all that have been assisting with classroom materials and operations. Your involvement not only makes my life easier but demonstrates to our students your active role and participation in their education. For those of you that are seeking other ways to help the community, we have two field trips next week that we need chaperones for. On Monday afternoon of next week we are walking to City Hall to visit the Mayor’s office (and hopefully the Mayor himself and some of his staff). On Thursday morning of next week we’re driving to Jewell Lake to go ice fishing. We need chaperones and drivers for both of these fieldtrips. We will lose out on these opportunities if we do not have the minimum 5 adults to 1 child ratio that the district requires. Please let me know ASAP if you are available. Before we do our trips next week we have this week to look forward to! Monday we had a guest speaker, Erin Connolly, to share what student council is, as part of our cultural unit on levels of government. This week we’re looking at school governments. As such, on Tuesday we are hosting another guest speaker, ASD School Board member Tam Agosti-Gisler to share her story from student to elected official and what her role is now. We have finished up our STEM unit on coding and will be merging into our unit on interconnectedness now. This begins with a pre-assessment and look at water. In math we continue to move through different concepts at different paces. As a reminder, students are always expected to take home any work that they will not finish by the next day’s lesson (as long as materials are not needed). Many students are not taking advantage of this opportunity and are having a harder time as a result. This week in language we’ll be looking at different tenses of verbs: past, present, and future. We’ll also continue working on our written research piece about a chosen type of government. Ask your child what type they have chosen! I hope you all have a great week! As always, call/text/email/stop by with any questions, concerns, or causes for celebration!
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Dear Families,
I hope you had a great weekend! I spent the weekend camping at Eklutna Lake testing some cold weather gear for some upcoming Chinese tourists that will be staying along the Iditarod Trail in March. (The tents were heated though, hence I am still alive!) This week we have a lot to look forward to. In language we’ll be looking at different types of verbs (verbs that show physical action, verbs with internal energy, and linking verbs), and will explore the different tenses of verbs (past, present, future). We’ll also be looking at the use of quotation marks in text (when directly using another person’s words, when a character directly speaks in a text, and when writing the title of a part of a work, like a chapter). In math we’ll be working through some geometry in addition to our other math: fourth graders will be exploring lines of symmetry, fifth graders will look at customary length conversions, and sixth graders will calculate the areas of regular polygons. The rest of our math with be a bit more diverse. Fourth graders will continue to work through dividing with 1-digit numbers, fifth graders will begin on decimal division, and sixth graders will continue work on coordinate planes. Our cultural studies unit on different levels and types of government will kick into full steam this week as we examine the different levels (local, state, national, international), and types (direct/indirect democracy, dictatorships, oligarchies, etc.). This will be explored through materials and a research project where students will pick one type of government, research the pros and cons, provide examples, and present their work to the class at the end of the week. The Reading Logbook is finding success with most students. Some have chosen to read a pre-approved book and complete a daily entry in their reading journal answering specific comprehension questions. This counts as one of their reading choices each week along with classroom materials Fiction Box cards, SRA’s, and Research Lab. Ask your child their preference. As you can see, it will be a busy and full week. Please don’t hesitate to pop in and ask how you can help hold your child accountable to the progress that is expected with the work time that is allotted. Before closing I also wanted to invite any families on a tight schedule after school to notify me ahead of time if their children need to hurry out. I appreciate that your time is valuable as I have my own prep and planning to do at the end of each day. I do believe though that holding the class accountable to clean up their work spaces in their classroom is an important lesson in responsibility and ownership, and twenty minutes should be sufficient time to accomplish this so I am reluctant to sacrifice additional class time for this purpose. There are times though that the class chooses to socialize rather than clean and the result is a late dismissal. If you have plans or need your child straight at the bell, please notify me ahead of time, and discuss how they can help their community move faster. I hope you all have a great week! As always, call/text/email/stop by with any questions, concerns, or causes for celebration! Burrr! I hope you are all staying warm with each other! These cold times make us feel special and unique because of the extremity of the place we call home! The weather makes it imperative to make sure all students are arriving to school with proper winter gear, equipped to stay safe and comfortable in the Last Frontier!
Being that we’re in the second semester of our school, it is a good time to start talking to your sixth graders about your family’s plans for middle school (if you’re not already). We will be having representatives from different middle schools such as Central and Stellar in the coming months to present some information to prospective pupils. I will be checking in with students as to what your plans are. The start of another semester is also a chance to rekindle our commitment to our community. Our classroom and school have plenty of volunteer possibilities to fulfill service hours. We will be having field trips in the coming months where we will need chaperones, parent presenters are always welcome, and there is always a project or more that your student’s teacher could use help with J . The school has PTSA meetings, typically on Thursday evenings, where parents can be connected to various other schoolwide volunteer opportunities. Thank you for all that you do! Here in the classroom, our students will continue our look into the causes and effects of Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Students are using matching materials in this unit, constructing a collaborative color poster, reading a biography of Dr. King, and analyzing his famous speech, I Have a Dream. This is in addition to our weekly “Map of the Week”. This week in math we are going to be spending more time the normal studying everybody’s favorite part of math: word problems. They are hard for everybody but so important in making practical connections between calculations and real life. Fourth graders are working with multi-digit multiplication, fifth graders are exploring decimals, and sixth graders are studying rational numbers. This is in addition to individual studies and RTI (MathWhizz). In language we’ll be looking at the surprisingly numerous ways commas can be used with our “skyscrapers” materials. We’ll also start on our extended unit on verbs. In reading we’ll continue our weekly practice of comprehension, keeping track of reading in the newly minted “Reading Log”. Last week we started our look at innovations and coding, including the Morse Code. This week we’ll move our STEM unit into binary coding…computer talk! The class was pretty engaged with the Morse code activity so I am excited to get into the language of electrical technology! I hope you all have a great week! As always, call/text/email/stop by with any questions, concerns, or causes for celebration! |