Happy New Year, Families! It has been great to be back together. I was happy to see that most everyone came back to school HEALTHY, rested and ready to start 2015.
Conference Options
In order to more fully meet your needs as parents, we are offering several format choices to you for the upcoming conferences on Thursday, February 26 and Friday, February 27. For many years, students have prepared "scripts" reflecting on their growth this year and areas in which to continue to grow throughout the rest of the year and in the future. Students attend spring conferences and read their scripts to us and we have casual conversation, celebrating successes and setting a few goals for the remainder of the year. The advantages of this format are: students get to be the "star," growth is highlighted, and students get to be active participants in conversations about themselves. The main disadvantage of this format is that parents sometimes want to talk about issues for which they would rather not have their child be present or are simply more comfortable talking one-to-one with the teacher. For this reason, we are offering you choices:
- the student gives their conference to their parent(s) at school: there is nothing to say that couldn't be said in front of the child.
- the student gives their conference to their parent(s) at home first and just the parent(s) comes in for the conference: the parent(s) wishes to talk to the teacher without their child present.
- the student gives their conference to their parent(s) at home and no one attends conferences because you are all on vacation. Please note that we are not offering spring conferences outside of the scheduled days and times.
Once the online conference schedule notification comes out to you, I'll email you this information again and ask that you just let me know which format choice you are making. In the meantime, please ponder the choices and let me know if you have questions.
We hit the ground running! This week we worked hard on the following:
- a continuation of multiplying fractions. Understanding and accuracy took big leaps ahead. Lessons 4.3 and 4.4 looked at multiplying improper fractions and mixed number by whole numbers. NEXT Wednesday 1/13 students will have a fact text. PLEASE ENCOURAGE YOUR STUDENTS TO BE PRACTICING THEIR FACTS IF APPROPRIATE FOR THEIR LEVEL.
- an introduction to our Human Body unit, with an emphasis on bones and muscles. Many extra activities are offered to the students during this unit, since our interest in this enormous topic frequently exceeds the boundaries of time.
- an introduction to our diversity book clubs. On Monday we discussed different kinds of questions that we can ask while reading; Right There, Think and Search and Beyond questions. Using two shared non-fiction texts we practiced not only answering, but coming up with these different kinds of questions that allow us as reader to not only accurately understand the events or a story, but to move beyond the surface, to ponder deeper level meaning and message in what we need. It was exciting to see the students enthusiastically ready to begin their book groups.
