February 29, 2016

This week we will be starting Unit 4 in ELA. This week's skills include combining sentences with linking verbs and identifying root words. We have been able to do some word study while working on our vocabulary words and looking for root words along with suffixes and prefixes. We will have both a spelling test and a vocabulary test this week. Spelling packets go home on Monday and need to be returned on Thursday in order to receive full credit. This week we will be reading a chapter book as a class called, Freckle Juice by Judy Bloom. We will be using this book to begin our first Socratic Seminar. A Socratic Seminar is a method of discussion that allows the students to engage in a discussion about their reading. They do not receive answers directly but rather through a series of questioning and discussions with each other they are able to arrive at their answers. As the teacher I am more of a moderator/facilitator rather than the director. The students are expected to come prepared by finishing the assigned reading and developing questions to bring to the discussion. This week we will learn what a Socratic Seminar looks like, what the expectations are and what the rules are they need to follow during the discussions. The focus is on having a respectful conversation that involves thoughtful responses that are derived from the text they are reading. The students have also been practicing all year using post-it notes as a way to note when they are practicing Daily 5 strategies, we will learn another note taking procedure with post it notes they can use while reading that may be helpful during the Socratic Seminar process. 

In Social Studies we are continuing our Economics unit. Last week we talked about consumers and producers as well as goods and services. This week we will be discussing Positive and Negative Incentives as well as Scarcity and Opportunity Cost. By the end of this unit the children will have put together an Economics book of facts that they can use to study for the chapter test.

In Math we are continuing our study of Properties of Multiplications. We will begin this week with the Associative Property and we will move into writing and solving expressions.

A few reminders:

• Please have your child fill out their reading log, it is part of their homework and they should be responsible for it.
• All current events are due on March 11. Any current events turned in after that date will be considered late and will not be given full credit.
• The students will  be assigned one chapter to read in Freckle Juice for homework this week, they may use those minutes on their reading log.