Keenoy Koala News 1-27-17
Koala of the Week
Our
Koala of the Week is Kyan Larson. Kyan
loves being involved in sports. He plays
basketball and soccer. He also loves to
go to the skate park to work on his skateboarding tricks. Some of his other hobbies include solving
different types of Rubik’s cubes and playing outside with friends. His family includes his mom (Somer), dad
(Brian), brother (Holden), and sister (Hannah).
He is the youngest in his family.
The
next Koala of the Week is Kyler Thomas.
It is nice when students bring in pictures, medals, or other items to
fill the bulletin board outside of our classroom. Thank you!
Shakespeare’s Pizza
PTA/BIZTOWN Fundraiser
Our
class sold over 700 dollars’ worth of pizza!
Our class goal was for each person to sell two pizzas totaling 24
dollars. 24 dollars X 25 students =
$600! As you can see, we exceeded this
goal by over 100 dollars! I am VERY
proud of the Koalas for helping PTA with the cost of this trip. Thank you Koalas and Parents!
Valentine’s Party and
Exchange
Our
valentine party will be Tuesday, Feb. 14 from 2:15-3:00. Any parents that are
helping with the party may begin setting up at 2:00. Students may bring
valentines for their classmates. This is not required. However, if students
choose to bring valentines, there should be one for each student in the class.
Attached to this newsletter is a class list. While we will not decorate
bags/boxes at school, students are more than welcome to do this at home and
bring to school for exchanging valentines.
Math
This
week we focused on:
*Identifying
fractions that are in simplest form and finding the simplest form of a
fraction.
*understanding
the connection/equivalence of fractions, decimals, and percents.
*Representing
decimals as fractions (tenths and hundredths).
We
will spend the next couple of days reviewing. The assessment will more than
likely be on Tuesday or Wednesday.
Reading
We
started discussing our next read aloud on Thursday called, Children of the
Dust Bowl. I spent a couple of days
building background knowledge about the Great Depression and life during the
1930s. During this time, a section of
the United States (Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and Nebraska)
went through a devastating drought. The combination of the economic crisis and
the drought made life for people living in this area especially tough. One of the reasons I selected this
informational text is to help students with their own charity informational
writing. I plan on frequently using this
story as a model text during our writing workshop time.
The
comprehension strategies that we will continue focusing on include:
*Compare
and Contrasting
*Point
of View
*Cause
and Effect
*Main
Idea
Informational Writing
Thank
you for taking the time this week to visit with your child about their charity
selection ideas. This discussion seemed
helpful, and I enjoyed reading each of their summaries about the great
conversations. Students have now
selected their charity to research.
During
the first part of writing, my lesson has focused on Organization. We have looked closely at the rubric expectations
for organization. We then graded several non-fiction texts to help better
understand how writers organize their informational stories. I am then providing students time (during the
second half of writing) to research information about their charity. I shared a Google Doc with them that provides
several helpful sites for each charity.
Although students can branch off of this list, most students are finding
the information needed within the sites provided.
Science/Social Studies
Typically
we save a portion of our afternoon for either Science or Social Studies. Since we started researching charities, it
has been very difficult to get the
lessons in during that time of the day.
Students are finding out that researching information from the web takes
a lot of time! We will get back into our
regular routine again next week.
In
science, we will finish up with our experimental design unit. Students will conduct an experiment by
testing the amount of force needed to pull a bag of sand across three different
types of surfaces. Our next unit in
science will focus on matter. In social
studies, we will continue learning about Pre-Revolutionary War events.
Word Study
Word
Study is also an area that I plan to make a bigger priority starting next
week. We will focus on when to use the
suffix sion vs. tion. Please look for
students to bring home their spelling words to study throughout the week. I will have them write the spelling words in
their planner too.
Upcoming Dates
Feb.
6 No School - Teacher
Workday
Feb.
9 Bookapalooza 6-8pm (see
note in folder for more info.)
Feb.
13-17 Conference Week
Sincerely,
Dan Keenoy
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