Mrs.Britton’s Newsletter
January 4, 2016
Dear parents,
***LOOKING AHEAD***
*Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great break. I'm excited to start a new
year. There is so much we are going to explore!
*I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the generous gift card you gave
me at Christmas. I am blessed to have such great families in my class. Thank you'll
much!
*Progress reports come home today.
What’s happening in class:
Math: we will continue exploring and learning about fractions as we begin chapter 9 this
week. We will explore comparing and ordering fractions as we complete lessons 9.1-9.4.
We will work in groups as we learn how to order fractions based on the numerators or
denominators. I plan on making this chapter hands on as much as possible. It's going to
be important for each child to have a good understanding of these skills. We will also
review multiplication each day. The children will have review quizzes throughout the
week.
Reading: we will be reading nonfiction text as we do close reads. We will have focus
questions to discuss and find evidence from the text to support our thinking. We will
incorporate writing into our reading block.
Vocabulary: we will be searching for interesting words from our text. We will begin
making charts of these words.
Word study: we will be learning about synonyms this week. Our new spelling words will
come home Friday.
Writing: we will write about our holiday break and concentrate on editing this week. I will
give each child a writing partner, and they will work together helping each other make
their writing stronger and better.
English: we will begin mentor sentences this week. I'm hoping to replace DOL with the
use of using strong sentences from books that I read to the children. The first day the
children will notice all the things the author included in the sentence. We will discuss. I’ll
select a teaching point for the week from the sentence. For example, our focus may be
nouns, adjectives, or verbs. On the second day, the children will write the sentence and
identify parts of speech for each word. Again, we will discuss. Third day, we will select
something from the sentence (the focus skill) and change words without changing the
meaning of the sentence. The fourth day, the children will use the mentor sentence and
write their own sentence using the structure the author used. We will select 4/5 and
discuss. The fifth day, I will make a test out using the mentor sentence and the focus skill.
We will complete the test this week together. I've been thinking on how to teach the
grammar more effectively, and I think this may be the way. We are going to give it a go
for a few weeks and reevaluate if it is more effective. Stay tuned!
Science: we will be exploring moon phases, seasons, and night and day. We will watch
videos to help us get an understanding of these concepts. We will also read text on each.
We plan on explore these concepts by doing some experiments during the week.
I really want to make the class more student centered, so the children and I will discuss
what they are interested in learning and how we want to go about learning them. I am
positive that science is one thing that will be brought up. Everyone enjoys actively doing
as they learn. I'm already planning on the children investigating volcanoes and then giving
them the opportunity to construct a volcano in class. It should be really fun and
interesting. I may be asking for your help in donating material that we will need in our
science exploration. I'll let you know as soon as I know the children's interest. I'm positive
I can incorporate the standards in most anything they come up with!
Homework for the week:
Monday:
No school
Tuesday:
-math pages 175-176
-read 30 minutes
Wednesday:
-math pages 177-178 (should be completed in class)
-read 30 minutes
Thursday:
-Math pages 179-180
-read 30 minutes
Friday:
-read 30 minutes
-math pages 181-182
Tests for this week:
No tests this week.
Citizen of the
week:
We will continue
this next week.