What's New?
As you might have heard, we have tried a few new things this past week. Based on students' requests, we experimented with our recess routine. This week we broke our recess into 2 segments, a 10 minute break after lunch and a 20 minute recess on the playground later in the afternoon. The feedback has been unanimous... the kids love it. As the teacher, I can tell you they are now more productive and settled in our work time between lunch and our final recess. I'm so thankful for the kids' suggestion and the freedom to try this out. Two recesses will continue!
Also new to our routine is cursive writing. We began first with basic strokes and have now moved into letters. The kids are very excited about learning "grown up writing," as they call it. During one of our persuasive writing discussions, the argument for teaching cursive in schools was mentioned. Though it has been removed and added back into the curriculum repeatedly over time, one of the benefits of learning cursive is that it gives us a chance to go back and reinforce neatness and legibility. We are using a handwriting workbook for most of our learning and practice. In terms of sequence we are learning the letters that begin with the undercurve first: i, t, u, w, e, l, b, h, f, k, r, s, j, p.
This coming week we will continue with book clubs in reading and our opinion pieces in writing. Some kids have finished up their final drafts and are beginning to research questions for a short, persuasive speech they will give later this month. As mathematicians, we will continue to revisit and deepen our understanding and application of topics we addressed throughout the year.
Important Dates
May 21 SC PASS, grade 4 & 5
May 17 CFI Family Dance, 6:30—8:00
May 24 Splash Day @ 1:30
May 27 Memorial Day Holiday
May 31 5th Grade Graduation @ 9:00
June 4 5th Grade Showcase of Projects
June 5 11:30 Dismissal (no AfterCare)
June 6 11:30 Dismissal (no AfterCare) Last Day of School
Our new after-lunch break.
Here we are experimenting with transference of magnetism. How many paper clips can you get to stick together?
We have been focusing on naming the strategies we use each time we solve a subtraction problem. We have added a few since. Please share with your child any strategies you use in solving math problems.
A little team effort here: partners were working together to solve multi-step word problems.
