Week of February 19, 2018

Good morning parents, 

I hope you all had a fantastic Chinese New Year. We had a short but wonderful week wrapping up our opinion writing, math unit, and beginning to delve into fairy tales. We loved watching the results as many book awards were announced from the US. We have read many "award winners" already this year. Students are also commenting on classmates' blogs. They know when they make a comment they need to be specific and can make connections or ask a question. Please take a look at your child's blog and post a comment to model this! What did you like about their post? What questions or connections do you have?

 Friday, the 23rd, ISKL will have our CNY celebration with an assembly from 11:30-12:15 in the gym. Feel free to join us! Students can dress in traditional Chinese clothing on this day. 

This week will start on day 2. 

Reading

Students will continue to study the characters in the books they read. Students will practice making predictions on what a character will do next, taking into account what they already know about the kinds of things he/ she tends to do, say, want again and again. Students will also begin book club groups. Students will choose which book their club will read and gather at the end of reading time to discuss what they read. Your child will come home with their book club book with assigned chapters to read. Please ensure the book goes back in their backpack when they finish so they have it for class the next day.

Writing

Students will begin writing fairy tales. During the first part of this unit, students will work on adapting a familiar fairy tale. Students reread the selected fairy tales, deciding upon which story element they will adapt.  From this point on, they see that changing one story element has a domino effect and affects the entire story. There are a few fairy tales in written and audio form posted on Classroom that your child can access.

For more information and ways to help at home please see our parent learning connection.

Math

We will begin our unit on Geometry. In this unit students will:

• Further, develop understandings of geometric figures by focusing on identification and descriptions of plane figures based on geometric properties.
• Identify examples and non-examples of plane figures based on geometric properties.
• Identify differences among quadrilaterals.
• Understand that shapes in different categories may share attributes and those attributes can define a larger category (example: rhombuses, rectangles, and others have four sides and are all called quadrilaterals).
• Expand the ability to see geometry in the real world.
• Draw plane figure shapes based on attributes.  
• Use data collected to make bar and picture graphs.
• Find the perimeter of polygons; use addition to find perimeters; solve for an unknown length and recognize the patterns that exist when finding the sum of the lengths and widths of rectangles.

Please see the previous post for more information.
Social Studies

Students will continue to look at the education, art/architecture and social structure of ancient civilizations.

Remember that home learning this week continues from last week. Student led conference appointments will come home this week. Thanks to those of you who wrote in with specific requests (and thanks for your flexibility to those who did not).

Have a great week ahead. Remember your child should bring a small gift (10 Rm or less) for their secret pal by Monday the 26th at the latest.