Happy, Spring, everyone! It was fun meeting with everyone again this past month at conferences. Report cards should have come home on Friday. You may keep the sheets inside, but please send the envelope back to school with your signature. I'm sorry I had to be gone yesterday. My mother will reach 92 years in two weeks, but she's been in failing health recently, and this past week was a rough one. She is doing better again now. My sister and I were able to transfer her from the hospital to a rehabilitation center yesterday, so that is a positive step.
We have been working pretty hard lately in Room 117, and the kids have been up for it! I am proud of them! In math, the new Unit 9 is taking what we've learned about fractions and decimals, and applying it to new knowledge about percents. Combining all these relatively new skill concepts takes time, so I want our kids to know that we will give all of this plenty of practice and they will do well with it. It just takes some extra exposure, which will happen in the next week.
In Writers' Workshop, we have dug into research and note taking about a well known or accomplished person in history. Students have chosen people who have lived in a wide variety of time periods, from ancient to recent times. We are reading from several sources, pulling out the info we need, taking efficient notes, organizing those notes into logical subsections, and then we will compose and type these into a biography. Many useful skills are being used with this project, so we will be at it for awhile yet. I am pleased that our kids have jumped into this with enthusiasm, sharing new information and facts with me and others as they discover surprises about their person. I love this!
I couldn't be more impressed with the discussion points our students have been coming up with during Readers' Workshop over the last two weeks. We are using our own reading books and those we have read together as a class so far this year, to compare and list life lessons and themes that we are learning from our characters. Wow! I am printing out the list of their comments we have made, so that each student can have a copy for their Writing Binders. Wait till you see how deeply many of our kids are thinking, and the meaningful lessons they are discovering! I think I will have them put their copies into their Take Home Folders for you to look at before we get them into our Binders. I will let you know what day that will be.
The subject of immigration is the main topic of our current unit in Social Studies. Most of our students were not aware of this entire issue in either our past or present world, so our reading and discussions have been opening up their eyes. Now some of them have commented that they are noticing more about this topic when the news is on at home, and that is just awesome!! In Science, they will be taking their final test on the Magnets and Electricity unit with Mrs. Bertz on Wednesday, March 25th. Plenty of notes and guide sheets are in their red folders, so these should be coming home each day now to practice and review. Thanks for helping them a little bit each night.
May I ask if some of our families would be able to supply our classroom with a few more boxes of Kleenex and cleaning wipes? We have completely run out now on both. Thank you so much.
I will be forwarding a flyer about a Young Writer's Camp to be held at Ohlbrich Gardens in Madison this summer, in case that is something you and your student would be interested in doing.
As always, please feel free to email or call with any concerns about your child, or questions you might have about our work. May all of you have a most wonderful Spring Break, one week from now! When we get back in April, I will inform you of some revised schedules on some days, due to the new Badger Exams we will be taking. Sincerely, Melanie Hannam
