Week of September 9th-13th

Hi Families,
We made it through our first FULL week of school -hooray! It was a pleasure to meet many of you at the Back to School Night. Here is a link to my Back to School Night Slideshow for those that could not make it. I forgot to address homework on the slideshow that night, so I added in an additional slide about it. I have not assigned any homework yet, but am hoping to begin by the end of September. I’m excited for a great year with your children!

This week we reinforced routines and expectations. We are still getting to know each other and build a sense of community. I find it very important to establish our classroom as a safe space for students to take academic and social risks, so I spend a lot of time on team building and addressing challenges at the beginning of the school year. As a result, academics are a little slow to start, but we are getting in a good groove with Morning Meeting, English Language Arts, and Math. I’m hoping to make a lot more progress in Science next week!

Below is an overview of our week’s accomplishments and suggested prompts to encourage conversations with your child about their learning.

Math: Unit 1 “Finding Volume.” We learned that rectangular prisms have a length, width, and height, and that to find the volume of one, you can multiple those values in any order.

• At home: Ask your child to multiple 3 one-digit numbers together, like 4 x 5 x 6. See how they choose to solve it!

English Language Arts: Historical Fiction novel study of, “The Watsons Go to Birmingham -1963,” by Christopher Paul Curtis. Students are loving this colorful novel. We continue to build background knowledge (Nazis, welfare, washing machine cycles) and vocabulary (poverty, peon, conscience) to help us maximize our understanding of the text. This week we worked hard to make inferences about characters’ personalities, perspectives, and backgrounds based on the subtle details the author provides.

• Ask your child to describe the character Byron. Ask them why Byron is a complicated character.
• Ask your child if they agreed with Momma’s decision to attempt to burn Byron for playing with fire.

Also in ELA, I administered more reading screeners, including a comprehension screener and a spelling screener.

Science: Unit 1: Matter in Motion. We reviewed the scientific process, discussed controlled experiments, and began reviewing the basic properties of matter. We’ll be conducting our first hands-on experiment next week exploring matter and its properties.

Community Building: First All School Assembly. Modeling respectful listening: “hearing, thinking, and caring” about what the speaker is saying. Giving “two eyes, two ears, and no mouth” to the speaker. Letting teachers teach and learners learn. Being empathetic.

• Ask your child what they think this rule means: “Let teachers teach and let learners learn.”

Important Dates: 

• Wednesday, Sept 18: School Picture Day. Forms went home. There is also a 5th grade picture order form if you would like a copy of the grade-wide photo.

Supplies Request:
Students were hoping to have a class basketball that they could bring out to recess. Our current one is weathered and lost its bounce! Please email me if you would like to donate one. Thank you in advance!

Here are some pictures of classroom action this week. Students matched multiplication expressions with rectangular prisms.

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