What did we learn this week?

📚 Reading and Writing

This week during our Amplify lessons, students started to draft their own true story and read personal narratives from Condoleezza Rice, Beverly Clearly, and Peg Kehret. As we study these two personal narratives, students are taking notes about the way characters change, their feelings and traits, how a story evolves in chronological order, and tips to add dialogue into their own personal narrative. 

Attached is a parent letter from our Amplify Curriculum. It goes over the major points of this Personal Narratives Unit and conversation starters to use at home. CLICK HERE

✍️ Grammar

During our Amplify lessons, students talked about the differences between nouns and verbs while defining specific vocabulary. Students engaged in various vocabulary games, writing activities, and research to study these new words. Additionally, students learned the rules of dialogue. Students studied the different ways to quote a speaker and incorporated this new learning into their personal narrative. 

🧮 Math

This week in math, we studied the different ways to read and write numbers up to 1 billion. We wrote these numbers in unit form, expanded notation, expanded form, word form, and standard form. Students talked about the meaning of the phrase, "ten times as much" and how that can change a number. We looked at word problems using the phrase, "ten times as many." Additionally, we look at word problems where students were given a certain set of criteria and they had to write their own number that matched. 

Attached is a parent letter from our Bluebonnet Curriculum. It goes over the key concepts covered in this unit as well as additional ways to help support your student at home. CLICK HERE

🧪 Science 

In Science this week, we talk about the importance of the scientific method. We asked good questions and made some observations to get us started. Students also work to express their claim as a C.E.R. C = Claim, E = Evidence, and R = Reasoning. By answering science questions as a C.E.R., students are able to make a claim, explain their evidence, and then justify their answer with reasoning. 

🌍 Social Studies

This week in Social Studies, we studies maps! Students noticed and wondered while looking at different kinds of maps. We studies the titles, keys and legends, scales and how to use them, and varations among map kinds. At the end of the week, students were give a rubric and a blank Texas map to fill in and color themselves.