8.18.14

What a wonderful 2 weeks we have had! Students have learned classroom rules and expectations. We also have gone over routines, routines and more routines! We have already seen so much progress in just 2 weeks and I am so excited to see what we will accomplish in an entire school year! My goal is to update the blog each weekend so you will get an overview of the past week and a heads up for the week to come. Hopefully in the near future our technology leader will be writing the blog informing you what we have done in the past week!

Math
This past week we have worked with base ten blocks. Some of the students are counting, some are adding and some are multiplying double digit by double digit! Each student is on their own level and that is okay! We are also working on rounding to the nearest 10. All students took a pre-test and when they show me they are ready they will take their post test independently. Both will be sent home for you to see the progress.

ELA
We have also been working on literacy work boxes, reading on RAZkids.com and writing opinion paragraphs. I will send home RAZkid logins this week so that your child can read at home. We are still working on DRA (developmental reading assessments) to determine the correct reading level for your child. Last week we went to the media center to check out books and to listen to a read-aloud from Mrs. McCoy. At this time all library books will stay at school in their desks.

Science/Social Studies
We learned about our 5 senses and how to describe an object with more interesting adjectives. We will be describing figs this week! Students will get to touch, smell and taste fresh and sun-dried figs. We will be writing opinion pieces on which is better. We also started learning about the water cycle and will be continuing to learn about the different aspects of the water cycle. This week we will be going to the science lab with Mrs. Knobbe. We will go to the science lab every other week. Our whole class will go on Tuesdays and our 4th/5th graders will also go on Thursdays with Mrs. Stewart's 4th grade class. This week the 4th/5th graders will make a mini-water cycle out of a 2 liter bottle that they will bring back to our class. Addison is always looking for science lab volunteers so please let me know if you would be interested in working with Mrs. Knobbe in the science lab.

Homework
Starting this week, homework will be posted weekly on the blog before Monday night. We will be teaching students how to access the blog and check what they have for homework, but some students will need assistance from parents. Since each student in our class is on their own level, the homework will have a range of problems or sentences for the expectation. It will be parents discretion of how many problems and or sentences your child should complete. Students should not be doing more than 30-40 minutes of homework per night. Send completed homework in their GATOR notebook.

Math: Give your child 5-15 numbers per night and have them write the number in expanded form and then have them draw the number in base-ten blocks. Here is a picture of what is expected:

Writing: Mid-line paper will be in the back of their GATOR notebook. Write 2-8 sentence about objects around the house. Choose one object per night from their bedroom, the bathroom, the yard or your fridge. Get creative!

Reading: Students should also be reading a book on their level or on RAZkids for 10-20 minutes each night, either out loud to you or on their own.

Please email me with any questions regarding homework at Kimberly.Kistler@Cobbk12.org.

Photos of some of the 4th/5th graders: