3/25 to 3/29

Hello,

Thank you for meeting last week for conferences.  It was great celebrating growth and setting goals for the rest of the school year.

This year, New Directions Learning Community has a new way for you to order your yearbooks with Network Photography - ordering online instead of using the traditional yellow envelope.

• To order your yearbook (the deadline is April 1, 2019): 
• Please visit www.networkphoto.net
• Click on the Fall Prepay tab
• Type "New Directions" into the space there
• Click on "New Directions" and follow instructions
• If you have any questions, please contact Network photography or the New Directions Learning Community office

Upcoming Events:
4/1: Yearbook orders due
4/5: Knowledge-a-thon and pledges due, Knowledge-a-thon Dance at night
4/17: Early Release
4/18-4/19: No School
4/22: No School

Reading:  In reading this week we will continue to get to know the characters in our books. We will also start reading fiction books and asking at the end, “What was the author trying to teach us?” We will explore how authors use their characters to teach lessons about friendship, perseverance, bravery, kindness, etc. Any books that the students bring home this week, it would be great for you to ask your child about the underlying message of the story and how did they know.

Writing:  This week in writing we are creating our own narrative checklist to help with reviewing our writing and setting goals.  We will launch into writing a series of stories and including thinking of more than one story for our favorite character and modeling ourselves after famous series writers.  We will focus on writing a book one for our series where we will include a lot of details about our characters.

Math: In math this week we are going to continue working with comparison bars. We will work on listening to story problems that are comparing and see what information we know and what we are missing. We will end this week with our Unit 6 test.

Science: This week in science we will be starting our Organism centers. One center will be looking through books, Mrs. Wolf in the library was very generous with gathering books for us! The other centers include iPad research, modifying umbrellas, experimenting with bird beaks, and matching animals to human inventions, known as biomimicry.

3/18 to 3/22

Hello,

I look forward to seeing all of you at conferences this week. We will also have the Book Fair going on if you are interested. Let me know if you have any scheduling conflicts or questions before conferences. Thanks!

Upcoming Events: 
3/19: Conferences
3/21: Conferences
3/22: No School for Students
4/5: Knowledge-a-thon and pledges due, Knowledge-a-thon Dance at night

Reading:  This week we will learn more about the main character in our books.  We will also learn to pay attention to the relationships that characters have in the story.  We will reread and to get to know the characters better so that we aren’t just following the characters but we practically become the character in our reading.  Our voices can show the character feeling and bring the character to life.

Writing:  This week in writing we are continuing to write realistic fiction books. We have created our characters and have been working on storytelling. This week we will work on getting our characters out of problems and learn spelling strategies to become serious spellers! At the end of the week we will take some time to set goals for our writing, using a checklist.

Math:   In math we will learn more about collecting data and comparing our data points. Students have been really working on questions like: How many more? Or how many fewer ___? We will also introduce a tool called a comparison bar to compare data and find out what is missing. We will start working on story problems that sound like this: Emma runs 13 miles. Brian runs 4 fewer miles than Emma. How many miles does Brian run?

Science: This week, students will be introduced to the idea that the natural world can provide insights for designing products to meet human needs. Students will examine the structures of trees that keep them from blowing down in the wind, using their observations to design umbrellas that can stay up in a strong wind.

You can share another amazing story with your child of how living things can guide the design of man-made materials: the invention of Velcro! This video describes the structure of “hook and loop fasteners” and how the idea for Velcro came from looking closely at seeds, similar to how students’ ideas for improved umbrellas came from looking at trees. http://safeYouTube.net/w/JUBb

Here are a few photos of us creating traps for the Leprechaun:

3/11 to 3/15

Hello,

Conference Meal 
http://signup.com/go/pfBkphc

Book Fair 
http://signup.com/go/kQrXeuw

K.A.T. sign up
http://signup.com/go/nBAoaqP

Here are a few photos from our celebration of the end of poetry.

Upcoming Events:

3/19: Conferences (sign up will be open tomorrow)

3/21: Conferences

3/22: No School for Students

Here is the link to our video of what we are learning this week:

https://youtu.be/8XVji2mWEhg

3/4 to 3/8

Hello,

Penny Wars: This week we will be collecting pennies in our classroom. The class with the most pennies will win a pizza party! You can also bring in silver coins or dollar bills to give to other classrooms to subtract from their penny count. This will end on Friday.

March Madness: This week we are starting our Book March Madness. Each class submitted a book and teachers will be reading all of them to their class. Then they will vote for which books they like best until we find a winner! Ask your child what book our class chose!

Upcoming Events: 
3/4-3/8: Penny War
3/8: Early Release
3/19: Conferences (sign up will be open tomorrow)
3/21: Conferences
3/22: No School for Students

Reading: We are continuing to get to know our characters in our books.  We will begin to describe the character traits and compare the character across books. We will form book clubs and read the same series of books.  We will talk about the characters and spend time performing our books.  We will have to look at the feelings of the characters, the dialogue in the books, and use what we know about the characters personality. 

Writing:  We are completing our centers this week.  We are exploring rhythm, songs, imagery, and sensory poems.  We will then look at using line breaks and repetition in our poems. 

Math: We will work with numbers through 120.  We will begin to look for patterns in the hundreds chart to help with adding and subtracting 10 and then with multiples of 10.  We will end the week with math test. 

Science: This week in science we are starting a new unit: Organisms (Plants and Animal superpowers). We will start this week by asking questions and seeing what we want to learn about organisms. We will then conduct a few experiments this week. The first is asking ourselves why birds have beaks and we will experiment to see why beaks are useful. We will also ask ourselves why baby ducks follow their mother. Throughout the week you could point out different plants and animals you see! You could ask what those animals have that help them survive the winter.

Questions to ask:

• What book series are you going to perform?
• What writing center did you go to today?
• What experiments have you done in science?
• What book did you read for March Madness?
• How many pennies does your class have?