Classroom Update - Week of August 12th

Upcoming Events / Reminders:

• Please make sure that you are reviewing your child's Mustang Report with them over the weekend and signing them and returning it back to school with your child on the following Monday.

• Tomorrow, your child will be bringing home their data notebooks. It will include their first math assessment in it. Please review this assessment with your child and sign the data wall sheet at the beginning of the Quarter 1 Math tab. These assessments must be left in your child's binder until the end of the year.

• If you have not signed up for the Remind App, please do so. I will be using this site to communicate and share classroom happenings regularly, so I really hope everyone takes the opportunity to join.

• ​To join send a text message to the number 81010 and type @mrsbrackes in the message space.

• If you are having trouble with this, let me know I can send a message to your cell phone number.

• Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 13th is Track 4's Curriculum Night from 6:00-8:00PM in our classroom (#410). Hope to see everyone there!

• Is your child interested in participating in CLUBS at Morrisville? Well, if so, please make sure to check out the clubs page on the MES website. Many of the clubs require your child to fill out an application digitally and many of the application dates are quickly approaching.

• Quarter 1 Interims will go home on Tuesday, August 27th.

• Labor Day is Monday, September 2nd. There will be no school that day.

• Track Out Day for Quarter One is Friday, September 27th.

• Mark your calendars for Fall Festival. It will be held on Friday, September 27th from 6-9PM. A flyer with more information will be sent home in Tuesday Folders, tomorrow.

E.L. Education:

Our class needed a few extra days to review the similarities and differences of poetry and prose, how to determine the theme and write a proper summary. Tomorrow, the students will take their mid-unit assessment in literacy. On this assessment they will compare and contrast poetry vs. prose, determine the poem's characteristics, and theme and then write a complete summary using a provided checklist. For the rest of this week, the students will continue to analyze what is happening in the book, Love that Dog and how Jack (the main character) feels about it. They will also continue to identify the characteristics of famous poems like, "Street Music," "The Apple," and "Love that Boy" and start to gather information on how those poets have inspired Jack's writing. Early next week, the students will take their end of the unit assessment. It will primarily center around a text based discussion with peers and as well as a written component.

Poetic Terms to Remember:

• Structure: how the poem is organized

• Rhyme/Meter: whether the poem rhymes and the rhythm or beat

• Imagery: words and phrases an author uses to help the reader imagine with the senses - sight, sound, taste, touch and smell

• Repetition: repeated words and phrases

• Prose: the ordinary form of written or spoken language. It has no meter, pattern or rhyme to it.

​How to Help Your Child at Home:

• Read poetry aloud with your student and invite him or her to find poems or a poet that he or she particularly likes.

• Help your student practice reading aloud fluently and accurately.

• Talk to your student about the meaning of the poems he or she is reading and what inspired the poet. Encourage your student to find evidence of that inspiration in the poems.

• Have your child turn a favorite poem into prose (see definition above)

• Have your child practice summarizing a poem that they read (A summary must include the title, author, details that tell what it is about, and identify the theme with support from the text).

Math:

This week in math, the students will continue to work on additive and multiplicative comparisons. They will be using visual models like math mountains, number lines, and comparison bars to help them in solving their word problems. Then, later in the week, the students will work on understanding the difference between a factor and multiple and being able to identify whether a number is prime or composite. Below are some helpful vocabulary that your child should know for this unit:

Important Math Vocabulary Words:

•Factor: one of two or more numbers multiplied to find a product

•Multiple: a number that is the product of the given number an integer

•Product: the answer to a multiplication problem

•Prime Number: a number that has exactly two factors, itself and one

•Composite Number: a number that has more than two factors

How to Help your Child at Home

• Ask your child to solve these multiplicative comparison problems:

• ​The giraffe is 20 feet tall, the kangaroo is 5 feet tall. The giraffe is how many times taller than the kangaroo?

• I have a piece of yarn that is 7 cm tall and Jim has a piece of yarn that is 5 times as long. How long is Jim's piece of yarn?

• What is the difference between a prime and a composite number?

• Can you tell me the factors of 32?

• What are the first twelve multiples of 6?

Social Studies:

This week in Social Studies the students will explain how North Carolina was established and how that colony changed over time. They will also spend a majority of the week reading a nonfiction article to learn more about what life was like for the people who first settled in the Coastal, Piedmont, and Mountain regions of North Carolina.

How to Help Your Child at Home:

Discuss with your child the following questions:

• Why did England want to establish colonies in America?

• What was life like for settlers in the Coastal, Piedmont, and Mountain regions?

• How were their lives similar and different?