Week of January 21 – 25

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend, and that many of you were able to reflect on the importance of Martin Luther King, Jr.  We also had a cool lunar eclipse take place on Sunday evening!

*Important Announcements*

*Virtual Lesson with Virginia Museum:  On Tuesday, we will have our next virtual lesson with the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.  Be sure to ask your child what he/she discussed with the museum instructor and what primary sources we analyzed during the lesson.

*End of Quarter / Buzzy Bash:  This Friday, 1/25 is the last day of the 2nd quarter.  We will also have our next “Buzzy Bash” that afternoon to celebrate our many accomplishments, especially with showing ownership!

*Teacher Workday Monday 1/28:  This is just a reminder that next Monday, 1/28, is a teacher workday and there will be no school for students.

 

*What Are We Learning In Class?*

*Reading:

This week we will continue working on formulating questions as our reading skill.  This week we will focus on formulating questions while reading fiction text.  Students will learn about 3 different levels of questions, from explicit (“green” level) to inferential (“red” questions).  During small group rotations, students will meet with me in small group and we will continue our strategy work using leveled texts.  When not with me, students will read-to-self and work on their writing.

We will also continue with our word study units from last week. Students have a detailed description of word study homework expectations in the front of their word study notebook.  Students will need to learn the word study feature and the meaning of the words. Please note that students will have 2 assessment during the week. First, they will be given 10 of their word study words to write sentences for, where they will need to use the words correctly and show the meaning of the word.  Students will take their Word Study Test on Wednesday 1/23.

*Math:

We are continuing with our fractions unit this week.  There are many different concepts in our fraction unit and it will be important that students complete homework nightly and work carefully in order to master the concepts. Please check in with your child each evening and see how they are doing.

Below is the schedule of what we will work on this week:

  • Tuesday 1/22 – Fractions Quiz #1 (on concepts covered so far); Then begin ordering fractions using 0, 1/2 and 1 as benchmarks for reasoning
  • Wednesday 1/23 – Continue ordering fractions
  • Thursday 1/24 – review fraction concepts
  • Friday 1/25 – Fractions Test (SOL 4.2)

*Please note that this unit on fractions will be our first unit that we do on fractions — SOL 4.2 only.  Later we will have another unit on computing with fractions.

*Social Studies:

This week we will begin our next unit on the New Nation (VS.6).  We will begin with VS.6a, where we will learn about the forming of the United States and the Constitution. We will learn about two of our “founding fathers,” George Washington and James Madison, and their contributions during this time period.

*Science:

This week we will start a new science unit.  The new unit will be on Energy, Force, and Motion.  The timing of this unit is great because it goes well with the field trip that we just took to the Math Science Innovation Center.  Some of the topics we will learn about this week are position, motion, speed, force, friction, and inertia.  Some of these concepts can be rather abstract for students to understand, so thank you for encouraging your child to review their notes at home.

 

Have a fantastic week!

-Mrs. Jacobsen

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