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.

During our four-day week, we spent most of our time working on creating situation and solution equations with multiplication and division word problems. We were able to easily transition to making math mountains with these two new operations, since we had so much practice with it last week with addition and subtraction. Some of the language that was used in the multiplication and division word problems was new to the kiddos. For example, we read a lot of word problems that had the phrase, "two times as tall as", or "four times as many as".

We also worked on multiplicative comparisons using comparison bars. A multiplicative comparison is a visual way to show multiplication and to show which quantity is larger than the other, and by how many times. This was a great visual for those who like to draw pictures to explain their thinking. It was more difficult to use when the problem involved division to solve.

Lastly, we took Quick Quiz 1 of our new unit. I was very impressed with the overall growth that the students have shown this unit, especially since it is a unit filled with word problems! :)

This week we read about renewable and nonrenewable energy forms. The class was split into groups and were in charge of one form of energy to present to the class. We talked about how we use that specific form of energy and the pros and cons to each form. The energy forms we researched were: solar, nuclear, oil and natural gas, coal, and wind.

Each group from my homeroom was able to present their form of energy to the class. Afterwards, we had a discussion about the pros and cons to each form and filled out a chart comparing them all. Mrs. Edwards’ class will present on Monday

Reading: Within this short week we accomplished a lot during our Language Arts time. In Reading, we dove in and looked at the importance of minor characters in the story. First, we had to all agree what perspective a story is being told by, or who the main character is. We learned to ask ourselves, whose eyes are seeing the story, whose thoughts am I hearing, and whose voice is telling the story. This was a good review for a few students who were getting mixed up on minor and main characters. Then we explored Uncle Henrick from Number the Stars, and learned that skilled readers imagine other perspectives, not only the main characters. We revisited the idea that skilled readers also turn to non-fiction to deepen our understanding when we read historical fiction. The students were able to do a little research on their time period and make connections to their book. Finally, we ended the week by looking at what we thought the theme of our read aloud is. We asked ourselves, “What is this story really about?” We reviewed that our theme must be a big idea that relates to the whole arc of the story, is grounded in specific details in the text, and we must consider the choices the author made, in order to find a theme. The students were broken up into different who groups who will then have a mock trial defending what they think is the ‘main’ theme of Number the Stars. Please make sure to ask your child what theme team they are. The debate will take place once the book is completed.

Book Clubs: are up and running again. The students overall did a great job meeting today. We had the entire house together and it was a success! There were only a few books missing and a few students without questions; however, overall, the questions came back with quality and they were bringing up great discussion! Way to go kiddos! Keep it up! We meet again on Friday.

Writing: Literary Essays are moving along! The students are finishing up draft one, self editing, peer editing, and the final conferences with Mrs. Edwards have begun! The entire writing piece should be completed by the end of next week. The final conferences will continue into March.

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