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.

We worked on addition and subtraction single-step equations this week. The students already know how to solve these problems, but what makes this unit different is we are now writing algebra equations for each word problem. The kiddos have to figure out what piece of information we have to find, and they need to write an equation using a variable for the unknown information!

There are two different types of equations we learned about: situation and solution. A situation equation is a number sentence, using a variable, that follows the order in which the word problem is written. A solution equation is a number sentence that is written so that the answer equals the variable, or information we need to find. Most students find it easier to write solution equations because as they read a word problem, they think about how they can solve it. The steps to solving that problem later becomes the solution equation.

We also had some Valentine’s Day fun in my class by completing color by number pages, working on themed word problems, and learning about the history of the conversation heart!

We completed an assessment on energy transfers this week. It was called "Johnnie's Bat". The scenario discussed a boy who brought his toy bat to school. The bat was turned on (it ran on batteries) and began to fly in circles, screech, shine bright red in the eyes, and then eventually fall to the ground. The students were given the task of using the forms of energy we learned about last week and discuss how the forms of energy transferred into one another when Johnnie's bat started to move.

We discussed the energy logs that went home, and it was an eye opening activity for the kiddos. They realized just how much we rely on energy to do things we love to do, or things we have to do in order to survive. There were so many great examples from home that we learned about through our discussion.

Reading: This week’s reading continued to focus on how to read a historical fiction novel. Theme is a huge component in the unit. The week started out by finding the theme with evidence from across the story. We looked at sentences starters such as “Could this have anything to do with…,” “Remember earlier in the story when…,” or “The author might be trying to teach us…” Giving the students starters helps them understand where to direct their thoughts. The students then came up with a list of small details from the book and listed thoughts and ideas on them. They enjoyed looking at the characters objects from our read aloud, realizing that an author puts in every little detail on purpose, which led us to symbolism within our chapter books. We practiced with our read aloud, Number the Stars, and noticed a simple pink cupcake can represent things the characters can’t have during the Nazi invasion, or even the innocents of a child during a war, and that it is something the war might take away. Finally, the students practiced defending what they thought the theme of the story was.

Book Clubs are starting once again. The students enjoyed the freedom of picking their own book and club this time around. A great part about this is that the students are already invested in the reading since it was a book they were able to pick. The challenge is our classroom has a wide range of readers, not always matching within groups. If your child’s book appears to be a struggle at home, please don’t hesitate to let me know. There are a few titles I am a little nervous about for some of our kiddos. Once again, the clubs will meet on Friday. They will need to have their week’s reading done, as well as come with two (quality) discussion questions.

Writing: The students are doing awesome at drafting up their Literary Essay. This is an assignment that takes a lot of attention on their part! They were given an essay “recipe,” last week (an outline). This week we needed to complete, edit and make changes on some of the confusions with the outline. We drafted from start to finish a literary essay example together on The True Story of the Three Little Pigs. This allowed the students to see how the outline sheet was able to turn into a five paragraph essay. We also had a mini lesson on transitional phrases to help our essay flow with the students’ ideas. As always, we have a few students still working on their outline, others are drafting in their notebooks, while others are typing and ready to edit. The entire essay should be drafted (and ideally typed) by next week, Friday.

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