February 3, 2017

Hello Families,

The month of February seemed to creep upon us, crazy how our year flies!  It was such a pleasure speaking with some of you this week during conferences, thank you for coming.  This past Thursday, students began their day with a presentation called Reading Rocks, by Joe Holiday. We were all so impressed by his performance as he inspired students to read by using magic tricks.  4W has many avid readers in our classroom, and the expression on our students’ faces as they watched this show was priceless.  Thank you so much to our PTO for putting this on for South School, we love it. 

Social Studies Exploration!

 In math this week, we wrapped up our unit 5 with an online review in class.  Our test will be on Monday and students will be assessed on fractions, plotting data, identifying angles/rotations, and symmetry!  We also had a CML this week, which encourages students to tackle word problems and higher level thinking questions.  I saw some fantastic effort from the whole class this month as they tried their best on this CML.  In reading, students focused on a non-fiction text about the life and jobs of an ant.  We also used a paired reading text, a fable, that allowed students to compare the readings and identify the differences in features as well as the author’s purpose for writing.  

 In Social Studies, students worked with a classmate and were assigned a specific part of the Southeast region to study.  We learned that the Southeast is divided up by geographic features.  States are categorized as Coastal states, Gulf states, or Inland states.  We used a Jigsaw approach to learning and students shared their knowledge about their assigned reading with the class.  Today, we learned vocabulary through the use of creating a flipbook!  In Science, Ms. Natale is teaching our class about sound.  We recently did a hands-on activity with mystery boxes where we relied on our sense of sound to identify objects in a box.  Students focused on the weight of the object as well as the vibration and pitch of the sound being made.  In other classroom news, we seem to have pencils that disappear quite frequently!  I am putting our students to the test by having a “Great Pencil Challenge” that will require them to hold onto their assigned pencil for week intervals.  This will teach them management and responsibility with their items.  We started yesterday, let’s see how we do!  Thank you so much for reading and staying updated on our daily happenings in 4W!  Below are some questions for conversation.  Enjoy the weekend!

Best,

Ms. Wentworth :)

Questions for conversation

1.  Describe Reading Rocks to me.  What was your favorite part?

2. What makes an object symmetrical?

3. Name the text features you would find in the non-fiction that was read as well as the fable.

4. What specific area within the SE region did you research? 

Morning Meeting Shares!