Week of Oct. 1st

  Mrs. Shedd’s Newsletter

Week of Oct. 1, 2018

Thanks so much to all the families that responded to my short survey about Open House and homework. The vote was evenly divided on which date to hold an Open House for my classroom.  I have decided to be at school on both evenings (Monday, Oct. 15^th and Wed., Oct. 17^th).  My classroom will be open from 5:30 – 6:30 each of the evenings to accommodate your schedules.  If however, you prefer to come on the school’s Open House, I will arrange for the room to be open. 

I would also like to thank everyone for their thoughtful comments regarding homework.  Our unit (grades 4-6) has discussed homework at EMES and has agreed to the following purpose statement:

Homework is intended to support and strengthen student learning.   It helps teach responsibility as well as accountability, and should be completed independently by the student.  Homework provides connections between a student’s family and school, and can offer insight in regard to what children are learning.

We have also agreed to certain things such as no homework will be assigned on Friday, all materials required for homework assignments should be available to students, assignment books will be supplied and used, and there should be a homework continuum across EMES.

This week our class continues a unit on narrative writing.  During the unit, we have had mini lessons on crafting fiction leads. Students have learned that a good lead should grab the audience.  We have looked at a variety of leads including beginning with action, dialogue, a sound effect, a snapshot of the setting, and more.  We have also looked at elaboration and the importance of dialogue in a narrative.  We examined our narrative writing checklist to discover where dialogue is referenced (such as in the ending, in craft, in elaboration, etc.)  On Wednesday, we read My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by Patricia Polacco, as we studied dialogue tags.  We recorded the variety of tags that Polacco used throughout this picture book.

During our poetry block, we have learned about the haiku.  We read samples of this unrhymed Japanese poem of three lines that contains five, seven, and five syllables, respectively.  We also learned that a haiku is usually light and delicate in feeling and is frequently involving something lovely in nature, especially the season of the year.  Students have completed a watercolor of something in nature and have written rough drafts of a haiku.

During the past two weeks, we have met with our kindergarten buddies on Friday afternoon.  The 4^th/5^th graders practiced fluency skills as they shared picture books with their buddies.  They also played math games together.

Fifth graders have been learning about perimeter and area this week in math class.  On Tuesday, we explored why area is recorded in square units.  Wednesday, we began to create two dimensional robots with a total area of 120 square units.  Students recorded the area for each body part.

Have a wonderful weekend!