Studying History with Artifacts and Monuments

October 28, 2016

Dear Parents and Guardians,

It was nice to meet you all during conferences last week!

Field Trip

On Monday afternoon from 1:15-2:50 we will be walking down Main Street and exploring the cemetery across from Fleury Lumber. My goals for the field trip are to have a fun group experience exploring our neighborhood, learning about history, science, and math. I am hoping that students get excited and curious about our local history and the artifacts that they can find right in their own backyards.

Students will be broken up into small groups with a chaperone or teacher. Each student will have a booklet/ scavenger hunt to help direct their exploration and learning. The booklets will include a hunt for different types of trees and other things to notice on the walk over. Once in the cemetery, the booklet will ask the students to explore to make historical observations and do some math.

Sharing Next Week

In order to help students understand how historians learn about history, we have been talking about artifacts from the past as well as the difference between primary sources and secondary sources. To help reinforce this, next week students are invited to bring in an object from home that they think would be an interesting artifact of their lives such as their favorite book, game, photograph, or map/ brochure from a place they like to visit. Other students will practice making inferences about each student’s life based on their artifact. Additionally, our exploration table will be open for students to share artifacts that they have discovered or collected that tell about the past (such as items they have dug up in the yard or things that grandparents have given them).

Reading

In reading, we are continuing to make inferences about characters from what they say and do, as well as pictures of characters. This week we started to talk about how characters change. Ask your child what inferences they are making about characters’ personalities, feelings, and changes they are going through. It is helpful for students to be reading narrative books right now -- that is, books with characters and a story (fiction or biography). I have also noticed that a lot of students are abandoning books before they finish them. Please encourage your child to read an entire book before going on to the next one.

Writing

We started a unit on personal narratives this week. These are essays about personal experiences that students have had. It would be great if you could brainstorm significant events and moments in your child’s life to help give them ideas of what to write about.

Math

As you have probably noticed, we have been studying multiplication and division. We have been building an understanding of these concepts by thinking about groups of things, skip counting (or “count bys”) and arrays. We have also been using number bonds, which some of you have asked about. Here is a demonstration of one. Notice times when you are dividing up items or putting groups of things together to reinforce these concepts.

Social Studies

This week students learned about what history is and how historians research it. We also started to learn about New England geography. Next week we will learn about Massachusetts geography. Each student colored in maps to show what continent, country, state, county, and town they live in. I was impressed with their geographical knowledge. See if they remember!

Thanks!

Take care,

Jessica Harwood