Classroom Update - Week of March 18th

Updates & Reminders:

• Next week we start Perseverance Week-here are the themes for each day:

• March 18: March Madness (wear your sports gear)

• March 19: Track Color Day (Wear your track colors. Which track will show the most perseverance?)

• March 20: College Day (wear college apparel)

• March 21: Future Career Day (dress up as the career you want to have in the future)

• March 22: MES Students Show Perseverance (wear school spirit wear)

• Track four 4th graders will take their third NC Check In on Wednesday, March 20th.

• Digital Families Community Event: Learn about safer and more responsible use of online technology among children and families on March 21 at 6:00pm at school. Children welcome and pizza dinner served! Space for this event is limited, so please register for this event at: https://goo.gl/forms/L091BD9uynGc064t1

• Track Out Day is Friday, March 29th.

• Fourth Grade Beach Field Trip is scheduled for April 26th. Reminders and packing checklists will be resent closer to the date.

• Mark your calendar - MES 5th Annual Stampede 5K is coming soon! This is a time for community, family, fitness and fun… and warmer weather! Join us for the 5th Annual Stampede 5K on Sunday, May 5 from 2-5pm. The proceeds from this fun family and community event will go directly to the MES PTA to fund educational resources, programs, and school improvements.

E.L. Education:

This week, the students will be writing their own broadsides (posters announcing news, information, events or proclamations, advertisements, or calls for help or support to a certain cause) from the Revolutionary War. These opinion/persuasive writings will be written from the point of view of both a Patriot and Loyalist during the war. They will go through the writing process by planning their writing on a graphic organizer, writing a draft, editing their work with a checklist and then finally publishing their broadside in Google Docs. The students will also be meeting with the teacher for regular writing conferences to help improve and strengthen their writing.

How to Help Your Child at Home:

• Discuss words that writers use when sharing their opinion on a topic and words that they use to persuade.

• Have your child share with you what the Loyalists and Patriots believed and what they were trying to convince other colonists to believe.

• Have your child share with you their broadside's focus statement and the reasons and evidence that they will provide for support.

• Encourage your child to keep up with their nightly reading homework via Google Classroom.

Math:

This week in math, the students will be connecting decimals to fractions using tenths and hundredths. They will be expected to add and subtract fractional numbers (tenths and hundredths) using visual models such as place value pieces, hundredths circles, and hundredths grids. The students will also decompose a fractional number into different addition problems (ie. 43/100 can be decomposed into 4/10 + 3/100 or 2/10 + 23/100 or many into more possibilities!). The students will take their assessment for this standard next Thursday. For the remaining week of school this quarter, the students will focus on practicing strategies to solve multi-step word problems.

Questions to Ask Your Child at Home:

• What is 3/10 + 4/100?

• What is 6/100 + 5/10?

• How can you decompose the fraction 67/100?

Science:

This past week, the students worked with Mrs. Wade to will learn about the slow processes that change the earth. They also learned about weathering, erosion, and deposition. In class, they created a poster to communicate their understanding to others. This week, students will investigate a stream table model in order to better understand how rivers change the surface of the earth. Later this week, the students will begin to learn about rapid processes that change the surface of the earth. These processes include volcanoes and earthquakes. They will have our science test on Wednesday, March 27. Students already have many notes in their Science Notebooks and it is encouraged for students to begin reviewing their notes a few nights this week.

How to Help Your Child at Home:

• Encourage your child to visit the links for landforms on the "Learning Links" page above. Also, students can use the resources at Discovery Education to begin a "Landforms" content folder (practiced with Ms. Minton).