Dear Families,
A week of school has come and gone and we are already getting into the swing of things and creating a good rhythm in the classroom. I began to send home reading logs this week, and have enjoyed reading the summaries of all the different books our students are reading. It makes me itch to go to the library and check a few of them out myself because they all sound so interesting and entertaining. This week we also began our differentiated math classes, and the transitions between teachers during math time has been quick and smooth. I hope the students can keep that up all year :) We are having Curriculum night this week on Thursday, August 18 where you will get a chance to meet your student's math teacher-be on a lookout for a flier with the schedule of events coming home with your student Monday or Tuesday.
This week I also started sending home missing homework papers. Some of your students got those papers for missing reading logs on Friday. Because there was a weekend spot many had planned on filling that out this weekend, but I sent home a new one which I would like to be filled out for this weekend. The missing homework sheet mentions that students have "extra homework" if they receive one of those papers. What it means is that if the homework was not completed it must still be completed and turned in the following day. If the homework was completed but left at home, the sheet merely must be stapled to the late homework and turned in the following day. Because I was not clear with my instructions on reading logs this week, the missing homework sheets will not count against students this weekend.
The students have been flooded with a lot of content information this week and we are already beginning to quiz them on some of it, and there will be a grammar quiz on Monday, a math quiz on Thursday, and a geography quiz on Friday. The grammar review was sent home with your students on Friday (Shurley English Review). I encourage you to ask your students about the sentence "jingle" we learned this week. If they don't understand what that is the first line is "A sentence, sentence, sentence..." and they should know the rest.
The rest of this week we will be learning a lot of fun things as well:
Grammar
We will start learning about different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives and we will probably be learning another jingle or two. A link for the next few jingles we will be learning can be found here. I also plan on sending home a list of punctuation and capitalization rules that we learning this week so you can reference them at home. Some of the quizzes and worksheets might ask for specific rule numbers and I want you to have a reference at home to look things up.
Science
We continue our unit on classification and will begin learning what Cornell notes are and how they can be useful study tools.
Math
This week we will continue our exploration of rounding to the nearest tens, hundreds, and thousands as well as talking about what estimating is and how it can be useful. We will be having a test on Thursday, and begin talking about strategies for adding and subtracting using mental math skills on Friday.
Literature
We will read chapters 3 and 4 of Trumpet of the Swan this week. The students will also start thinking about cause and effect.
History
We continue to look at and learn about the different parts of maps, such as the compass rose and lines of latitude and longitude. On Friday we will have a quiz on the continents and oceans of the world.
While I plan to send most papers home on Fridays with the students, occasionally, with homework, I will send it home the same day. That happened this week and many of the students noticed a CAN in the upper corner of their paper. I did not have time to explain what that meant to them at the time, but I want to clarify it with all families now. CAN is an acronym meaning C-complete; A-accurate; and N-neat, and I grade homework on those standards.
I hope you are having a great weekend and I look forward to seeing your students on Monday
Miss Carnahan
A week of school has come and gone and we are already getting into the swing of things and creating a good rhythm in the classroom. I began to send home reading logs this week, and have enjoyed reading the summaries of all the different books our students are reading. It makes me itch to go to the library and check a few of them out myself because they all sound so interesting and entertaining. This week we also began our differentiated math classes, and the transitions between teachers during math time has been quick and smooth. I hope the students can keep that up all year :) We are having Curriculum night this week on Thursday, August 18 where you will get a chance to meet your student's math teacher-be on a lookout for a flier with the schedule of events coming home with your student Monday or Tuesday.
This week I also started sending home missing homework papers. Some of your students got those papers for missing reading logs on Friday. Because there was a weekend spot many had planned on filling that out this weekend, but I sent home a new one which I would like to be filled out for this weekend. The missing homework sheet mentions that students have "extra homework" if they receive one of those papers. What it means is that if the homework was not completed it must still be completed and turned in the following day. If the homework was completed but left at home, the sheet merely must be stapled to the late homework and turned in the following day. Because I was not clear with my instructions on reading logs this week, the missing homework sheets will not count against students this weekend.
The students have been flooded with a lot of content information this week and we are already beginning to quiz them on some of it, and there will be a grammar quiz on Monday, a math quiz on Thursday, and a geography quiz on Friday. The grammar review was sent home with your students on Friday (Shurley English Review). I encourage you to ask your students about the sentence "jingle" we learned this week. If they don't understand what that is the first line is "A sentence, sentence, sentence..." and they should know the rest.
The rest of this week we will be learning a lot of fun things as well:
Grammar
We will start learning about different parts of speech: nouns, verbs, adverbs, and adjectives and we will probably be learning another jingle or two. A link for the next few jingles we will be learning can be found here. I also plan on sending home a list of punctuation and capitalization rules that we learning this week so you can reference them at home. Some of the quizzes and worksheets might ask for specific rule numbers and I want you to have a reference at home to look things up.
Science
We continue our unit on classification and will begin learning what Cornell notes are and how they can be useful study tools.
Math
This week we will continue our exploration of rounding to the nearest tens, hundreds, and thousands as well as talking about what estimating is and how it can be useful. We will be having a test on Thursday, and begin talking about strategies for adding and subtracting using mental math skills on Friday.
Literature
We will read chapters 3 and 4 of Trumpet of the Swan this week. The students will also start thinking about cause and effect.
History
We continue to look at and learn about the different parts of maps, such as the compass rose and lines of latitude and longitude. On Friday we will have a quiz on the continents and oceans of the world.
While I plan to send most papers home on Fridays with the students, occasionally, with homework, I will send it home the same day. That happened this week and many of the students noticed a CAN in the upper corner of their paper. I did not have time to explain what that meant to them at the time, but I want to clarify it with all families now. CAN is an acronym meaning C-complete; A-accurate; and N-neat, and I grade homework on those standards.
I hope you are having a great weekend and I look forward to seeing your students on Monday
Miss Carnahan
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