Dear Parents!
We are excited to invite you to come in and learn a little bit more about what we have been working on all year. Your child has taken time to organize and reflect on some work they would like to share with you. This night is a time for your child to shine, I will be here to answer questions, but the room will be busy with about five families at a time. The Spring Conferences are optional. If you would like to schedule a separate conference with myself and Miss DeWitt to discuss any concerns you may have please let us know.

The Spring student-led conferences will be held on Monday, March 20th from 3:45-6:15. There is a link below that you can use to sign up for a time slot. We are not using Family Access to sign up for conferences this time around.

Our main focus this week was multi-step word problems. We spent the first part of the week practicing our charts of what we know and what we need to find. This helps us to find that "missing question" that needs to be answered first in a multi-step word problem. All four operations were options for each word problem, and the kiddos had to decide the correct one to use.

We filled out our Unit 4 study guide and played a review game. We took our Unit 4 test today. I can tell that word problems are much easier for these students after having so much more practice. They are definitely more comfortable with multi-step word problems compared to the beginning of the year. We will spend next week prepping for the MAP test. We will be going over common ideas and skills that will be seen on the MAP that we haven't been able to cover yet. Geometry is going to be a subject we will work quite a bit next week!

We were able to finish our energy presentations on Monday this week. We also conducted energy rotations! Each station had a different object, and the students were in charge of discovering the energy transfers that took place when they got the object to work. There were magic bracelets that changed colors in the sunlight, a solar propeller, pop-up toys, a handheld electric generator, dominoes, pull-back toy cars, and a magic ball that lit up and made noise when two metal pieces on the outside were touched.

During each station, the students discussed what forms of energy were observed and in which order the energy forms transferred from one to another. They mapped out the energy transfers for three of the stations (pull-back toy cars, magic bracelets, dominoes). After we talked about each station as a class, we finished our science unit with a quiz.

We will be transitioning next to chapter four and five in our social studies textbook. Chapter four will explain the fur trade in Wisconsin, and chapter five will discuss our state government history and the steps Wisconsin took to become a state. They will get this chapter in just in time for our trip to the Capitol!

Reading: I am sad to say our Historical Fiction Unit is coming to a close. The students have all been doing so well with this unit, and enjoying our read aloud, Number the Stars. We finished the book this week, which meant we were able to have our little debate on which theme is shown the most throughout the book. We had the themes: bravery, friendship, determination, hope, and generosity all go head to head with powerful evidence and very convincing speakers (Watch out parents! These kids are smart cookies!). Please make sure to ask your child how their debate went and if their team is a finalist.

We also had a busy week in our reader’s notebooks. The students had to synthesize with their nonfiction research and ask themselves if the new information adds to what they already knew, or if it raised new questions. The research continued by adding more background knowledge to help deepen our understanding of a section from our historical fiction book that we had questions on. We had to search hard to find what Peter, from our book, had found to help hide the Jews which fit in a handkerchief. Be sure to ask your child what we found out!

Then the students learned to not overgeneralize when they read non-fiction. We saw examples of students work where they stated “Everyone in the country had lots of butter and cream,” vs being more specific with their response and stating, “People in the country who had a cow during WWII could have more butter than those who didn’t (referring to a scene in our read aloud).” The students did a great job relating this information to their own historical fiction book. We ended the unit with a mini lesson on seeing themes across titles. The students needed to look at our read alouds and see if there was a common theme, not only in one book, but across two or more of our books.

Book Club: We did a great job coming up with better questions this time around. The students were also able to start their final book club project, which they will be completing as they read their book. The final project is a story map of all the big events happening. They be come home asking to print a picture here and there to add to the poster. The students will be working together on this project.

Writing: Editing, editing, editing. This week our Literary Essay work is full of peer editing, revising and one on one conferring with the teacher. Overall, I am so impressed. I had to share a couple of the students’ essays because they were SOOO well done! Thank you to those students who allowed me to share J The students were able to follow the graphic organizer perfectly and come up with some wonderful pieces of evidence for their thesis. I am beginning to notice fewer issues with capital letters, and indenting. Commas vs periods are still an issue in general. This writing task is not easy, yet the students have done a wonderful job persevering to get the job done nicely! Way to go students. I am hoping ALL literary essays are wrapped up by the end of next week.

MAPS: Language Arts MAPS test will be next Tuesday and Wednesday during your child’s reading and writing time. Please help make sure your child is getting a good breakfast and plenty of rest.

Email: dewilyn@pewaukeeschools.org
Website: http://pewaukee.schoolwires.net/site/Default.aspx?PageID=1028
Phone: (262) 701-5557