Week 12: 12/7-12/11

Hi everyone,

We all braved last night's storm! Hopefully we won't have many more this year :(.

Here's some important information about this week:

iReady Assessments: We have assigned two 30 min blocks per day on the remote schedule for students to complete the iReady diagnostic tests. Students will also be working on these tests in school this week. Students should begin with the math section remotely on Day 1 of Remote Learning. On Day 2, students should continue working on the math section. If they have time, they can begin the reading section. We will also work on the reading tests in school this week. Students will need headphones and a fully charged device in school to work on the test. Please check in with your child to make sure their headphones are functioning properly. I encourage students to use headphones at home as well, in order to help with focus and so as not to disturb other family members. Students' login information is on a green slip of paper, taped into their take home folder. Please contact me if this goes missing :). The link to access i-Ready will be on the remote schedule Sunday evening.

** It is extremely important that your child completes these tests independently. If they ask for some help or get frustrated when they are stuck, please just encourage them to make their best guess and move on. Students should take their time and do their best, but these assessments should not cause a great amount of stress. The questions will get increasingly more difficult depending on how your child is performing, and it is expected that each student will get a significant amount of questions wrong-- that's okay!**

This Week's Remote Work: Please help your child to remember to put their completed remote work into their Take Home Folder to return to school. I collect these assignments, check off if they're completed, and provide feedback to students using them. This week, students will bring home:

  • iReady scrap paper for math assessments (Day 1 and 2)

  • Word Study Sort -- adding suffixes to 1-1-1 words (Day 1)

  • Writing Draft (Day 1)

  • Math: Two Part Problems and Match Me Up practice pages (Day 2)

  • Science: Plant cards for Mystery Science activity (Day 2)

Holidays and Traditions: Every year, it is so interesting to learn about the many different holidays and traditions students in our class celebrate! One of my favorite things to do is to incorporate multi-cultural books/activities into our school day so students can begin to develop some awareness of the diversity in our world and even in their school! If you have or know of any books that could teach a little bit about your family traditions or the holidays your family celebrates OR if you are interested in joining a Zoom session with your child to share a little bit about your traditions or the holidays you celebrate, please let me know! We would love any help the week of the 21st when we are all remote!


Here's a peek into what we've been doing in school:

Math: We finished up our unit on Multiplication and Division! Students wrote their own story problems using division and multiplication situations and have shared them with classmates to solve. Students will take a fact assessment this week to check on fluency with 2's, 5's, and 10's facts.

Writing: We learned that writers are always working on more than one thing. Last week, students worked to put themselves back in the time of their small moment to give every small detail, they learned about when to start a new paragraph, and they began thinking about how to emphasize the "heart" of their story.

Reading: We finished up our first reading unit by reading a short story called "The Yardsale" and answered some text-based questions. Students are starting to feel more comfortable answering questions about character traits, prediction, summarizing, and author's craft. Our next unit is all about nonfiction!

Science: We are wrapping up our crayfish unit! Last week students learned a lot of really cool facts about crayfish like the different colors they can be, who their predators are, and how they grow!

That's all for now! Have a great week!

Ms. McLellan