Week of October 3-7

Good afternoon, parents! Happy Friday! I hope you’ve enjoyed the week! We learned a lot this week as we explored Native American culture regions, worked on summarizing, exploring theme, utilizing prefixes, and even trying out various division strategies. I really appreciate your support in encouraging your students to complete the flipped classroom work on Native American culture regions. Every student completed the graphic organizer thoroughly and on time, which allowed them the opportunity to work in groups during class to create murals of the 7 culture regions they studied at home! The murals turned out beautifully and they will be displayed in our classroom! Blog pictures coming soon…!

 

Dates to Know:

October 12^th~Early Release @ 12:20pm

October 12^th~Fall Festival 6-8pm

 

7 Habits: This week we will continue to use the mission statements written by the kids to write our own personal and academic WIGs. A WIG is a “Wildly Important Goal.”

Reading: During reading this week, we will continue to explore theme, but now we will examine it through the lens of poetry. We will then segue into determining an author’s purpose.

Writing: During writing, the kids will apply what they’ve learned about theme this week in order to embed theme into their own writing. They will be given the opportunity to write a story and a poem which incorporates the theme of their choice.

Math: As we near the end of this current math unit, students will be learning about division, order of operations, as well as verbal and numerical expressions of numbers.

Social Studies: Our focus for social studies will continue to be Native Americans as we learn about their systems of government and economics. We will then begin to explore the time period of exploration through the lens of culture and geography.

 

Flipped Classroom~Native American Cultural Regions

Listen to each of these readings and take notes on each Native American cultural region using the graphic organizer provided to you on Monday, 9/26. It is important that you have notes for each heading . The organizer needs to be completed and returned no later than Thursday, 9/28 so that we can complete an in-class project on the Native American cultural regions.

Eastern Woodlands Cultural Region

Southeast Cultural Region

Great Plains Cultural Region

Plateau Cultural Region

Northwest Coast Cultural Region

California-Intermountain Range

Southwest Cultural Region

Week of 9/26 & Tiger Trek

Tiger Trek Fun!!

This Week’s Curriculum

7 Habits: How do I set my own WIGs (wildly important goals)?

ELA (Reading & Writing): How do authors use idioms, adages, and proverbs in their writing? We will examine the differences between these types of figurative language and explore their meaning, as well as use them in our own writing this week.

Word Study: What are prefixes, suffixes, and root words? Kids will learn decoding skills as we study the meaning of various prefixes, suffixes, and root words, as well as the impact of prefixes and suffixes in altering the meaning of words.

Math: How do I multiply and divide whole numbers? We will continue to practice multiplication using both the area model and the standard algorithm, examine the relationship between multiplication and division, and eventually work towards dividing whole numbers.

Social Studies: How do I read and analyze maps? We will continue to explore maps and their components and we will review for this week’s test.

Pokemon Parts of Speech, Synthesizing, & Map Labeling

Early this week, we reviewed parts of speech and the kids had the opportunity to go on a parts of speech client around the room. For each part of speech they collected all of the words for, they earned a Pokémon card! It was a lot of fun!

 

Today we worked on synthesizing information from a really interesting article about how dogs and humans understand language in the same way! The kids worked hard to determine importance and then summarize in order to synthesize the information!

 Finally, this afternoon we were working on maps. One thing the kids completed was an activity where they had to find and label the various landforms and bodies of water on a physical map. They did a great job working in pairs! 

It was a great week!

Week of September 19-23

Good afternoon, parents! It has been an awesome week! The kids have been laughing at me because every day I tell them, “We have so much to do,” and it’s true! However, we are learning so much and I’m impressed with the hard work everyone is putting forth! This week we tried to make Oobleck for their 20^th star celebration on Monday. It didn’t go so well, but everyone stayed really positive and smiles were all around the room despite Mrs. Whitley’s poor recipe following skills! We also took time out to allow the kids to perform their poetry for 2 and 3 voices and it was AMAZING!! Each group or pair chose a unique topic and a unique approach to it in their writing. They all synergized to write and perform, and we all enjoyed watching the performances during class. I will post videos to the blog as soon as I can get them uploaded. I want you all to know that we have a wonderful class and I’m so grateful to work with your children this year. J

 

Upcoming Tests & Quizzes

Wednesday, 9/21~Quiz over continents, oceans, equator, and prime meridian (Kids must be able to label these accurately on a map.)

Friday, 9/23~Geography Test (study guide coming home today; due on Wednesday, 9/21 so we can go over it)

 
Dates to Know
Thursday, 9/22~Tiger Trek (Send a water bottle with your child’s name on it and clothes they can exercise in. Students will also receive a free Tiger Trek T-shirt that morning when they come in to wear during the day.)

 

Color Days Next Week

Monday: Purple
Tuesday: Black
Wednesday: Brown
Thursday: White
Friday: Pink

This Week’s Curriculum

7 Habits: How do I set my own WIGs (wildly important goals)?

ELA (Reading & Writing): How do authors use idioms, adages, and proverbs in their writing? We will examine the differences between these types of figurative language and explore their meaning, as well as use them in our own writing this week.

Word Study: What are prefixes, suffixes, and root words? Kids will learn decoding skills as we study the meaning of various prefixes, suffixes, and root words, as well as the impact of prefixes and suffixes in altering the meaning of words.

Math: How do I multiply and divide whole numbers? We will continue to practice multiplication using both the area model and the standard algorithm, examine the relationship between multiplication and division, and eventually work towards dividing whole numbers.

Social Studies: How do I read and analyze maps? We will continue to explore maps and their components and we will review for this week’s test.

Our First Sharpen the Saw Time

On Thursday of this week, our class got to have our first Sharpen the Saw time in the gym! They opted to play an exciting game of Capture the Flag! Sportsmanship was excellent and fun was had by all! Here are a couple of pictures to capture their fun!

Wacky Tourist Day

Today was Wacky Tourist Day and we also had our regions presentations! The kids did great and their enthusiasm was fantastic & it was really neat to see their creativity at work with their posters, handouts, trifold a, and Power Points! I was really impressed with their hard work!

Eva was awesome in her warm winter gear for winter in the west, but she was sure to recommend we not wear shorts during a northwestern winter!

Kimball was too cool in his western ski wear and the background on his presentation was stunning!

Rex was so cool in his Midwestern style outfit and his trifold was fabulous with beautiful pictures!

Emily was representative of the southern part of the western region and she did a great job capturing the natural resources!

These kiddos went all out for Wacky Tourist Day! They looked great! I wish I'd gotten more pictures, but we were so engrossed in the presentations I forgot to take more photos! Overall, I'm quite proud of our class and their proactive attitudes toward our first homework project! Way to go Whitley Crew!!