Study Island

Please make sure that your child is using our new web resource for reading and math practice! At conferences you received a letter explaining how to get there. It is also linked to our state standards and is a wonderful resource and practice site for you and your child.

Minnesota Comprehensive Assessment tests

These are also known as the MCA's.

Mark your calendars for:

Reading will be April 14, 15, 16

Math will be April 21, 22

We will be practicing filling in the bubbles and looking at the format of the test.

Students will be able to bring in gum or hard candy to help calm their nerves for the test.

It is also very important that they get a good nights sleep and a healthy breakfast before each testing day!

Conferences

Thank you all for taking your time to come in to conferences. I really appreciate the opportunity to share
your child's progress with you. Your child works very hard all day and they love to show all the projects they have been working on.

I Love to Read Month

Our school has planned a wealth of activities for this month that all include reading!
Your child has a bingo sheet that they can do reading activities on. Please sign it and after they have a bingo they can bring it in to me for a prize.

Word Work

We are continuing to look at words and instead of memorizing a list each week, we are doing a lot of different activities with words. We look them up in the dictionary, find synonyms and antonyms, count the syllables and figure out what part of speech it is. We then use them in our sentences and stories we are writing. Students are finding out that some words have more than one meaning and are having fun using those words in different ways.

Writing

We have been looking at paragraphs and what makes a good paragraph. We have also been doing some research on animals. Students will then write their own paragraphs to describe the animal that they researched.

We compare a paragraph to a hamburger. The top bun is the topic sentence. The burger and fixings are the detail sentences and the bottom bun is the closing sentence. It is a great visual for students to use to make sure they are writing quality paragraphs.

Reading

We reading biographies now. We just finished reading about Abraham Lincoln. We discussed his characteristic traits and what made him such a great man.

Students will continue to read biographies throughout this month and look at why someone decided to write a book about them.

We will be discussing our own character traits and writing autobiographies.

Math

We finished our unit 6 on Geometry. We also finished Journal 1 for the year!!

Now, we are in Journal 2. Unit 7 that is all about multiplication practice. Students should continue to practice the 0-10's. Again, it is very important for your child to know these basic facts.
They really like going to the website www.funbrain.com to practice facts.

States Test

The Midwest state packet is due next week, Thursday, February 19th.
Students should finish the yellow sheets and get those handed in. They should
also take time to practice for the test on the midwest states.