Classroom Update - Week of December 2nd
Upcoming Events / Reminders:
Our classroom spelling bee will be held on Thursday, December 5th. It will be held in the morning at 9:30, so please make sure that you child is at school on time that morning. A practice sheet was sent home two weeks ago for your child to practice, if they wish. The top two spellers will go on to compete in our school bee on Friday, December 13th.
This Thursday is an embedded PLT day, which means that the students will be eating lunch in the classroom. Please do not plan to eat lunch with your child on this day.
Our last make-up day for last quarter's inclement weather will be this Saturday, December 7th. On this day, the building will open at 8:45am, instruction begins at 9:15am and dismissal starts at 12:45pm. Breakfast will be served on these days, but not lunch. Please make sure to provide your child with a snack or two on these days.
The Scholastic Book Fair will be at MES from December 2nd - 13th. Each student will have the opportunity to create a wish list during their media special (ours is this Friday). Their wishes are examples of books they saw at the fair and would like to add to their personal libraries at home. We highly encourage parents to come with or without their children to browse what is available at this year's fair. In addition to being open for sales during the school day, there will be an opportunity for parents and families to shop the fair on December 7th (Saturday School) from 8:45-10:45 am and December 10th from 6:00-8:00 pm.
The MES Annual Science Fair scheduled for Tuesday, December 10th from 6-8 pm! If you would like to volunteer, please contact Bonani Langan (bonani.langan@gmail.com) or Janis Gould (jgould@wcpss.net).
Track Out Day is Friday, December 20th. Enjoy your long five week break and I will see everyone back at school on Monday, January 27th.
E.L. Education:
This week the students will be starting their performance task for the quarter. They will be constructing a choose-your-own-adventure style narrative where the animal that they conducted research on will be their main character and be forced to use their defense mechanisms to help them survive. They will be working on putting this all together in an interactive slide show presentation that we hope to share with parents the last week of school. A strong emphasis will be placed upon using descriptive language and elaborated details to describe their scenes and action.
How to Help Your Child at Home:
Have your child share with you the details of their choose-your-own-adventure.
Who is their predator?
What defense mechanisms do they plan on using?
What outcome do they want each use of their defense mechanism to have?
Math:
This week in math the students will be calculating the area and perimeter of rectangular figures. They will be focusing on solving problems involving missing sides and having to calculate the length and width when they only know the area and perimeter. Many of these problems will be multi-step, so using the problem solving strategy of WITS (see below) will be very helpful. I also require all students to draw a picture for each area and perimeter problem to help them visualize what is happening in the problem. We will take our assessment on Thursday of this week.
Problem Solving Using WITS:
W - What are you trying to figure out?
Rewrite the question as a statement!
I - Identify important information!
Underline and write the important information that you will need to help you write your equation and solve the problem.
T - Think and Solve!
Think about the information above and write your equation. Then solve the equation
using the best strategy for you!
S - Share how you got your answer!
Explain how you got your answer and check your work!
How to Help Your Child at Home:
Continue to practice your multiplication and division facts at home with your child.
Give your child different scenarios that involve solving problems with area and perimeter.
Have your child explain to you how they use WITS to solve multi-step word problems.
Social Studies:
This week in Social Studies the students will be learning about the state government in North Carolina. They will be learning about each of the three branches of government (legislative, executive, and judicial), the roles and responsibilities of these branches, and how they work together. The students will also learn more about how a bill becomes a law in state government and checks and balances. The students will be putting all of their notes into a flipbook that they should bring home later this week to study, as they will be adding notes to it each day. They will be taking a quiz on state government in the middle of next week and they will not be allowed to use their notes on this quiz, so it is very important that they study a little bit each night.
Questions you can ask your child at home:
*Who are the members of the Legislative Branch? How long do they serve? How many members are there? What are their roles and responsibilities?
*Who are the members of the Executive Branch? How long do they serve? What are their roles and responsibilities?
*Who are the members of the Judicial Branch? What are the three levels of the Judicial Branch? What are their roles and responsibilities?
*How does a bill become a law?
*Why are checks and balances important in government?
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