Thursday, December 8, 2016

December 5th through the 9th












Keenoy's Koala of the Week: Elliot Bone


My name is Elliot and I'm not really into athletic things very much.  I'm interested in different things like building models.  I like to build models called Gundam, because it is relaxing and fun for me.  I also like Dungeons and Dragons because of how free you can be in the game.  I would like more people to try it because it is more fun than they might think.  I also like animals a lot and my favorite food is sushi.  My family includes an older brother, mom, dad, and a dog.  I love them very much!

Keenoy Koala News                                                                12-9-16

Dear Families,

I wanted to take the time to let you know how thankful that I am about having your child in my classroom, and the support that each of you have given this year.  Have a terrific Holiday Break and I look forward to a terrific second half to the year. 

Writing and Social Studies
Writing paragraphs continued to be our focus this week. Students practiced researching and taking notes for an explorer they selected in Chapter 3.  Students then focused on a specific area of information about their explorer (such as their early life, accomplishments, challenges, etc…).  After organizing their researched information, students wrote a paragraph about the explorer. I noticed a lot of paragraphing improvement during this process.  Students realized the importance of coming up with a main idea (first sentence) then supporting that main idea with other sentences. If you made it to our Holiday Open House, I hope that you enjoyed the information about their explorer on the fun Photo Speak app!  They seemed to have a lot of fun with this project. 

Next week, I will send home information about our January writing project.  After break, students will begin their research about a charity that they have selected. We will use mentor texts along the way as well as specific lessons will be taught to improve the craft of the informational report.

Science
Thanks for participating in our reflex data experiment during the Open House.  Our class will figure out the average of 15 adult’s reaction scores.  Then we will compare this new data with the data that we already collected with 2nd and 5th grade reaction results.  Hopefully the ADULTS WIN!

We paused our science unit (experimental design) this week due to our Photo Speak social studies project.  This project took a bit more time than I had planned out.

Reading
Next week, students will take an assessment over the comprehension skills taught during the past several weeks (inferring, predicting, and using context clues to figure out the meaning of words).
After winter break, our focus will move to main idea, theme, point of view, and cause/effect.

Math - Variables & Expressions
We continued working on order of operations. When numbers with decimals were added to the problems, many students needed a refresher on how to add, subtract, and multiply with decimals.
Next week, students will be assessed over this topic.

Important Dates:
Dec. 20                   Winter Party 2:15-3:00
Dec. 21-Jan. 3       No School  - Winter Break
                                                                                                                                Sincerely,
                                                                                                                                Dan Keenoy


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