Welcome to the 2024-2025 school year! My name is Mrs Jones and I am so excited for the opportunity to be your child's teacher this year. I will be starting my 14th year at Union Academy. I have been teaching over 22 years and absolutely love working with children and helping them love to learn. I received my Bachelor's of Science in Elementary Education at Appalachian State University. I have many years of experience teaching 3rd, 4th and 5th grades in both Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools and at Union Academy. My favorite place to spend time is at the beach with my family, reading books and listening to the ocean. My 2 children, Molly and Jack are both UA graduates and Molly will be a senior at NC State this year and Jack will be a freshman at Western Carolina. We are looking forward to fall football season- Go Pack.... Go Cats!!
Language Arts
We began our notice and note strategy with our new novel Tiger Rising This is such an amazing novel because it is usually one that they haven't heard of before. I love seeing their predictions and how their depth of thinking grows as we read the novel together. . We were also able to work on our prove your thinking with text evidence strategy. This is an important skill to develop and to determine the difference between evidence and inference. One of the traps I notice students fall into is overthinking the questions and guessing what "may" happen. We will continue to work on this important skill throughout the year.
We will be working on the non-fiction strategy next week of text structure. This is such an important skill to help evaluate why the author is writing the article. We will be working on this skill throughout our school year.
Math
We have been working on our area and perimeter unit and wrapping it up over the past few weeks. The tough concepts in this unit are complex figures. I love seeing the student faces when it all finally clicks. I know that several students are having to work harder because concepts are more difficult this year. That's okay :) We have been talking a lot about continuing to work when things are challenging, It is okay if we don't understand it the first time, just don't give up.
Next week we will be working on multiplying larger numbers. We will be working with 2, 3 and 4 digit numbers multiplied by a 1 digit number and 2 digit by 2 digit. Your child will be learning multiple strategies to solve these equations, and they may be new strategies to you. They will have notes and examples. Please encourage them to bring these items home if they are struggling. There are also lots of resources online that can help if needed. I am ALWAYS willing to help too. They just need to let me know they need me.
Science/ Social Studies
I loved hearing the student presentations of our NC Symbols projects. We were all able to learn even more about NC from each other. We have begun talking about citizen rights and responsibilities as we enter election season. Learning more about our NC government is always such a fun topic.