~ HAPPY FRIDAY ~

It was great seeing all the students this week!  I hope everyone enjoyed their Spring Break.  My language arts students took some time on Monday to share some stories, as they were still full of excitement from break.

AROUND THE SCHOOL

April 16th - May 4th: ISTEP 3rd & 4th only
April 16th - April 20th:  School Safety Week
April 27th:  Book Fair & Ice Cream Floats
April 27th:  Deadline for Summer School Registration
May 2nd:  Early Dismissal at 1:45

FREE High Ability Summer School

This is a wonderful opportunity for your child to be immersed in the study of Medieval Times.  There will be projects, reading, presentations, guest speakers and a chance for students to present what they've learned in the packed full three weeks!  Students who have attended have raved about the experience!  This is the unit that usually has the most students attend.  It sparks the most interest from our students.  I know there's often an overlap between other summer programs; DON'T LET THIS STOP YOU! Mrs. Pethes welcomes any and all even if you need to miss a week or so.  It's worth it plus it's FREE this year!  Your child will still get so much out of this!  Please ask if you have questions.  Friday, April 27th is the deadline for registration!!!!  I have more copies of the brochure if you need one.

LANGUAGE ARTS


1ST GRADE:  All ABOUT PUNCTUATION:  This week we took the time to explore the importance of punctuation.  We looked at our 4 poems on a period, question mark, exclamation mark and a comma.  After reading through each poem, we discussed the author's purpose of writing each poem and worked through our reading analyzer questions to guide us.  Next week we will look at how punctuation marks add meaning to a sentence.


2ND GRADE:  THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX:  This week we started Book the Second.  Our students were introduced to Chiaroscuro - the rat.  The rats in our story enjoy the dark, dungeon where they torment the prisoners.  Chiaroscuro's parents played a trick on him with his name because it meant the arrangement of light and dark.  We have seen some similarities with Roscuro and Despereaux, as they both have a desire to see and be in the light.  They both struggle to conform with the rules they are supposed to follow.  We will learn more about this character as we continue to read book the second.

3RD GRADE:  SPARK:  They have put their finishing touches on their SPARK Project Presentation.  All that is left is to rehearse it and present their solution.  They put a great amount of details into planning their project and I am proud of how well they worked on this project.  They chose to create a Science Project Day to allow our 3rd graders to present science stations to our Kindergarten students. The students would interact with each other as they rotate through 5 different experiments.  We are moving onto our last big project for the end of the year which is a novel study on the Classic - Black Beauty.


MATH

1st Grade:  Congruent:  These guys rocked it after returning from Spring Break!  I had a student remember our term - congruent.  They all remembered the definition.  We played one last variation to our matching game of congruent shapes to review for our Think Deeply.  
Together we looked at our question and decided that the two shapes Imi and Zani presented to us were congruent.  Then they had to explain their thoughts as to why they were congruent - discussing the size, shape and position of the shapes.  The next day we had to help Zani because Imi went missing!  While exploring our new concept of symmetry, it was our job to find Imi with mirrors and partial images of Imi.  Then we took some time to explore symmetry with mirrors and different challenges.  We will continue to investigate our new concept next week.

2nd Grade:  Think Deeply:  It was time for our Think Deeply question.  They had to choose a shape from the 3D playground and describe it to Dru and Teller.  Due to Spring Break, we practiced responding to this question together with a shape as a class.  Then they each constructed their own shape to write about on their own.  To end the week, we played the mystery shape game.  The students had lots of fun with this game.  


We reviewed the different attributes we have focused on this year as ways to describe a shape.  Then students took turn describing a mystery shape while the other students would guess it.  We will continue with our new lesson next week.














3rd Grade:  Mental Math:  We are approaching the finish line of our math books.   We are working on our last section on mental math.  This week we combined using mental math while visualizing with our hundreds charts.  They practiced this skill with a partner.  


Then we combined using our two properties and the hundreds chart into a partner game for added practice.  The students drew 3 numbers out of a bag and had to solve it with two different strategies.  Then with the partner they needed to decide what the best strategy was to solve the problem.  

We will finish this game next week.

4th Grade:  Magic Squares:  These guys were introduced to adding fractions with different denominators this week.  To introduce this idea, they had to solve the magic square.  They had to fill in a 9 square box with the numbers 1-9 without repeating any numbers.  

The catch was the columns, rows and diagonals must all add up to the same number.  After they mastered it with whole numbers, they move onto solving them with fractions.  They did great when they solved it with like denominators.  They were challenged when it was with different denominators.  We moved onto a different variation by solving  magic triangles.  To introduce the game, we again practiced with whole numbers using the numbers 1-6.  We worked on a strategy of finding the three solutions before filling it in because it will guide them on the proper placement into the triangle.  They had lots of fun with these two challenges this week.  We will finish this lesson next week.

Have a Great Weekend,

Ms Losinski