Friday, March 10
Dear Parents and Guardians,
Thank you so much to those of you who have returned your conference forms. If you have not returned it yet, please feel free to contact me by email or send in the form on Monday. Conferences are next Thursday and Friday, March 16 and 17. I also want to thank you for the extremely helpful donations to our classroom. We really appreciate it!
Homework
Students will not have spelling words next week because of the half days. I am worried that not all students are reading for 20 minutes per night. This is the MOST important part of the homework because it clearly leads to improved reading. If you need help finding books, let me know.
Progress Note Clarification
Some parents asked about the “Multiplication Facts Mastery” on the progress notes. It is a measure of mastery -- it is different from a test score. This is a percentage that the computer program xtramath gives each student based on speed and accuracy on the first attempt with a math fact. It is more important to me is that students have strategies for figuring out the facts, whether they are skip counting or using facts that they know and adding on. To me, the speed is less important than the understanding of what multiplication is and how to use what you know to figure out other facts.
MCAS Practice
Today students were introduced to the computer-based MCAS test we will be using this year. There is a tutorial that starts to teach students how to use the tools that the test offers (rulers, highlighting, bookmarking, answer elimination) that we started to go through. We will continue to explore it next week. After that, we will practice a few of the tests online so students understand how the computer program works and know what the test is like. Since this is their first time taking this test, I will work hard to make sure that they know what is expected of them and how to show what they know.
Reading
We are focusing on reading non fiction and using text features to help understand what we are reading. Find out from your child what different text features you might find in a nonfiction book.
Math
We are gradually building our understanding of fractions. You may have noticed vocabulary that is new to you from our fractions study. A unit fraction is one fractional piece. For example ½, ¼, or ⅛. The unit form is one fractional piece in words: half, third, eighth, etc.
Science
The topic of this week’s science lesson was dinosaurs: how do we know what they looked like? Are they lizards, birds or something else? We are learning how we can make hypotheses based on fossils. We are also exploring how the structure of an animal’s teeth say something about what kind of food the animal preferred to eat (i.e. meat, plants, or both). You can continue to stoke their interest in dinosaurs by researching dinos and fossils together. If you have any toothed pets, such as a cat, dog, or even hamster, you can classify these as herbivore, carnivore, or omnivore based on their teeth.
Yours truly,
Jessica Harwood