New Year's Resolutions

January 6, 2017

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Happy New Year! I hope that you all had happy and safe holidays. I went down to the beach in North Carolina and got to really relax. We also saw dolphins, whales, and a shark!

You may have heard that I had jury duty on Tuesday. Luckily, I was not picked since it was a grand jury with a three month commitment! It was so nice to come back to our class of enthusiastic, hard-working learners.

New Year’s Resolutions

As a class, we set some resolutions that we want to work on to make 2017 even better. Each student also had the opportunity to set individual resolutions for school, reading, respect, responsibility, and anything else they want to work on this year.

It is important to me to emphasize growth mindset and hard work. Students often get frustrated or sad if something is hard or they are “not good at something.” However, scientists have found that our brains actually grow the most when something is hard (as long as it is not way beyond our abilities). I want our class to realize that they can get better at everything and it is okay for things to be hard or not to come easily. They are all making great growth and progress!

Reading

Please make sure that your child is reading for at least 20 minutes each night. Have them tell you what questions they have about what they are reading or what they are wondering about their books. We are also talking about how some questions are answered in the book and some you have to make guesses or inferences to answer.

Writing

Next week we will do a short assessment unit in writing. The students will be learning about African Safaris and then write a story about going on one.

Math

We are wrapping up our second unit on multiplication and division. Our unit test will be next Friday. You can help your child at home by practicing multiplication math facts on paper or with xtramath.org. Additionally, working together to create and solve word problems is a great way to reinforce the learning.

Science: Force and Motion

We started a new science unit this week on force and motion. Students have learned about the primary forces of pushing and pulling. We have also been talking a lot about friction. They even learned about Newton’s first law of motion: an object at rest stays at rest unless acted upon by a force; an object in motion stays in motion unless acted upon by a force. We are currently conducting experiments about motion to see how to make a toy car travel the furthest.

Book Orders

Book orders are due on January 20. If you would like to order online our code is QC3WM.

Yours truly,

Jessica Harwood