Two Weeks in Review: February 11-22

We've had a busy two weeks, and its so hard to believe that we only have 3 weeks of school until spring break! The year is just flying by!

In language arts, we spent a few days on a district-wide assessment where students had to write a personal narrative. These will be compared to their writing from the beginning of the year, so that we can see areas of growth, or areas where we still need to focus our instruction. We have spent a lot of time watching videos, reading books, and doing some online research in reading as we learn about our PBL project on conservation. Most students are choosing to focus on endangered animals so I am sure you will be hearing about that a lot in the coming weeks! During the project, we will be focusing on non-fiction reading and writing skills such as using text features, note-taking, cause and effect, using context clues to determine the meanings of unfamiliar words, and expository writing.

In math, we have continued our unit on multiplication and division, with a focus on the 6s and 9s facts. Please have your students practice these at home! We teach them strategies such as building up from the 5s to the 6s, or building down from the 10s to the 9s, but the more they practice this, they more fluent they will become in the facts. Next week we will discuss multiplicative comparisons (three times as many for example), and then end the week with a unit assessment. I will send home a review early in the week that they can work on at home to prepare for the test.

In science, we have continued our unit on weather and will have a test on Monday that will cover weather tools and how to read charts that show weather data. Students are well prepared, and we will of course review just before the test with a Kahoot game. Our next unit is outer space, which is always a fun one!

Ms. Na has been teaching social studies and we have been learning about spending, savings, and advertising. We will continue studying advertising over the next 2 weeks, so that students will be prepared to design their own advertisements for the Economics Fair. They are all looking forward to the Economics Fair on Tuesday March 12, and are hopefully working on their products at home.