Weekly Updates 5/18-5/22

NEWS/EVENTS

• Poetry night will take place tomorrow from 6:15-7:45! Please come by to support our class nominated poet Alua, and see some of the poetry work of 3-509.
• We are going to Stoneledge Farm on May 27th! Dee Dee and Vanessa will be joining us as chaperones. I will send out an email with more specifics this Friday, but plan to have the kids arrive to school no later than 7:45 because we will leave at 8:00 am sharp. We hope to arrive back at P.S. 11 at 5:00 pm.
• There is no school Monday May 25th, as we are observing Memorial Day.

HOMEWORK:

Monday: Read and jot for 30 minutes, sort words in word study notebook, finish researching country (if you haven't done so). A Reading Response is due Friday.

Tuesday: Read and jot for 30 minutes, Line Plot HW, Reading Response is due Friday.

Wednesday: Read and jot for 30 minutes, Word Study Menu Option, Line Plot HW, Reading Response is due Friday.

Thursday: Read and jot for 30 minutes, glue and study words, Line Plot HW, Reading Response is due Friday.

Friday: Read and jot for 30 minutes each day over the weekend.

CURRICULUM

Reading: This week we are wrapping up Mystery Book Clubs. We are looking for lessons we can learn from our stories, and are planning book club posters that will share these important lessons and findings.

Writing: This week we are transitioning from taking notes about countries of interest to drafting a table of contents and writing long across chapters. Students are creating sections geared towards the land, economy, culture, and histories of their countries, in addition to others. We will revise these sections at the end of this week, and will aim to publish by May 29th.

Math:  This week we are moving from Pictographs to Line Plots. We will explore how to partition a line into fourths and halves, and will plots these points along our plots.

Social Studies: This week we are launching Folk Tales Around the World. We will start by reading a wide variety of tales, and identifying similarities and differences between myths, fables, and legends.

Weekly Updates 5/11-5/15

NEWS/EVENTS

• Farm permission slips for our trip to Stoneledge Farm were sent home today for our May 27th trip. Unfortunately bus students missed these, so I will make sure they receive a copy tomorrow. We will only be selecting two chaperones per class, as there is limited seating on our buses. Also, chaperones should know that they will most likely be separated from their children on this trip. For all big PS 11 trips, this has been the policy. By doing this the emphasis is more about safety and the coordination of the trip than spending one on one time with children. Thank you for your understanding in advance! If this still appeals to you, I will draw names by Friday to select the two chaperones. Priority will go to parents that have not yet attended a PS 11 field trip this year.
• The next family Friday (enrichment celebration) has been moved to June 12th. 
• We will most likely have an end of the year celebration for students and families. The date is TBD.
• May 19th is poetry night and our students have nominated our very own Alua to represent our class!

CURRICULUM

Reading: As we approach the end of our Mystery Book Clubs, this week we will spend the last bend of the unit reflecting on lessons learned from decisions our characters made, walking in the shoes of our detectives, and continuing to reflect on theories and ideas. Most students have read a minimum of two books in the series, and we hope to read at least one more by next week.

Writing: Now that students have their sights on the countries they would like to research and write about, we are focusing on goal setting and starting to write long about different sections.

Math: We are repeating the data collection process of asking a question, collecting data, organizing and representing data, describing and summarizing data, and interpreting the data but this time pictographs. We are considering the process as a whole and are working to develop more sophisticated questions that have a meaningful purpose.

Social Studies: Although I am still using Nigeria as a country to model strategies with during Writing Workshop, in the next week we are taking a Nigeria performance task and will then move on to Folk Tales Around the World.

Weekly Updates 5/4-5/8

NEWS/EVENTS

• Tonight is the PS 11 Spring Auction and Gala at The Hudson Terrace! I look forward to seeing you there!
• This Friday is Hannah Ticoll's (our fabulous intern from Teacher College) last day. We are working on a special project, which will be presented to her by the kids on Friday.
• This week I will be sending home permission slips for our upcoming field trip on May 27th to Stoneledge Farms. Keep your eyes open! It will most likely be sent home Thursday.

CURRICULUM

Reading: This week we are diving into other books in our mystery series, and studying connection across books as well as growing ideas. We are experimenting with different talk tools to strengthen the discussions we are having with club members.

Writing: We just launched our newest writing unit- Creating Information Books about Countries Around the World. We are revisiting text features this week, and will select a new country of interest by Friday.

Math: Last week we launched our newest math unit: Data Collection and Graphing. Throughout this month we are teaching the kids the process of developing a question, collecting data, representing the data, describing and summarizing the data, and drawing conclusions. We will do three cycles of this implementing different types of graphs. Last week we highlighted bar graphs. Towards the middle of this week we will focus on picture graphs.

Social Studies: We are wrapping up our study of Nigeria and will soon be moving on to Folk Tales around the World!

Have a great week,

Ms. Bouchard