Valentine’s Day Tomorrow!

We WILL have a small ‘party’ tomorrow in celebration of Valentine’s Day. In the morning, we will work with our Kindergarten buddies and do a few Valentine’s related activities. No food or treats necessary.

In the afternoon, we will pass out Valentine’s in class and have a treat. We will also do some activities. Students are NOT required to bring cards/treats for others, but if your child does want to bring something, please do bring something for everyone.

Girls: Nicole, Emma Rose, Haley, Julia, Chloe, Makayla, Jenna, Emma Quinn, Hanna, Sofie, Isabella, Mackenzie, Ena.

Boys: Jorge, Ryan, Aron, Michael, Clatus, Tyler, Jonathan, Max, Harrison, Miles, Matthew.

February 2012 Curriculum Update

Here is a quick look at the curriculum we plan to cover this month:

In math workshop we will continue our work with fractions, which began last week. Students will continue to develop their understanding of how fractions work and how they are related to THE WHOLE or THE ONE. They will also continue to work with probability. During this week we will explore addition and subtraction of fractions as well as equivalencies between fractions. We will also explore additional names for fractions and how they are related to decimals. We plan to have our test on this unit on Wednesday, 2/29, which should give us plenty of time to become very comfortable with and appropriate 4th grade understanding of fractions. In addition to our regular Everyday Math lessons, we will be spending a bit of time with fraction based games to help refine and solidify our understanding of this complex idea. You can help your student at home with the covered concepts by reading over the Unit 7 Parent Letter that came home last week which details activities you can do. Also, please take time to check over your student’s work and if you don’t feel comfortable helping him/her with the work, please remind your student to see me in the morning before school for additional help.

In writing workshop we have been working on writing nonfiction picture books. We have developed or research skills and our concept of organization. We have also been focusing on using domain specific language (language that is specific to a topic; the language that an expert on a given topic would use) in addition to revising for content and clarity. We have also done a bit of work with images and graphics and text placement to help aide readers in comprehending information. This week we will focus on editing and making last minute revisions. Our final books will be ‘published’ on or by this Friday. Students will then have the opportunity to share their work with each other. Next week we will start a short unit on writing for the STAR Writing test, which will take place on Tuesday, March 6th. Topics will include unpacking a prompt, developing a quick outline, and then doing fast drafts. I am not sure what the genre will be for the writing prompt at this time, so we will spend some time practicing how to quickly interpret a prompt and determine its genre.

We will also wrap up our unit on textual research in Reading Workshop this week, as it has been so closely tied with our work in both Writing Workshop and in Social Studies. Next week our focus will be on tackling complex texts through work with Historical Fiction. We will focus on partner talk to develop comprehension, strategies to help us interpret complex texts (in addition to reviewing and highlighting the strategies that we already know), and we will focus on how to read carefully for differing perspectives on text and to allow those perspectives to help us become more complex. We will aim to integrate this unit closely with our social studies curriculum.

In Social Studies we will continue our simulation of sailing to California to trade with the missions. Students have really enjoyed this simulation thus far and many have been working overtime to get their mission reports finished. The will have plenty of time in class to get these reports done (but many students are working on them at home as well). Our goal is to wrap up our study of the missions by the end of this month and then briefly do some study of the Rancho period and then move into the Gold Rush.

Students are now rotating to Ms. Watson for science on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Ms. Watson and I share a communication log to help keep tract of student learning and behavior. Overall, students have been having a good time learning about rocks and minerals and are looking forward to many more sessions before they begin to rotate to Mr. Winslow for technology projects. We will cover the last unit in science, Environments, when rotations end in April.

Weekly spelling has been going well since we came back from Winter Break. Students are now in two groups, based roughly off of their assessments from November. For the past couple of weeks, most students have been receiving a list of about 27 words that are grouped together by a spelling pattern. Students are to cut their words apart and sort them based on the spelling pattern that they are studying. They are also to write these words in their word study notebooks each week in columns by pattern. For the test at the end of the week, I will select 10 words from the range of patterns being studied. Students are expected to write these words and then to use each word in a good sentence or to write a definition. The purpose of this is to make sure that students are not only practicing the spelling, but also making sure they know how the word is used. We have done some practice with writing good sentences in class, but will continue to refine our skills with this.

That about covers it for now. Will send more updates as needed. And, as always, please do not hesitate to contact me!

Project Look! Tour at the Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club

On February 21st, students will enjoy a Project Look! tour at the Palo Alto Lawn Bowls Club through the Palo Alto Art Center. Students will receive a guided tour with docents to view work by artist Judith Selby. They will then engage in an art making project using the materials and techniques highlighted during the tour.

Students will leave Palo Verde at 8:45 for the tour that starts at 9:15. They will return to school after their art project ends at 10:45. We plan to be back at Palo Verde by 11:15 at the latest, so students will not miss music class. It is likely that the travel time will be much less than the 30 minutes allotted.

We will need drivers, so if you can drive, please indicate so on your son/daughter’s signed pink permission slip. You can also email me directly to let me know if you can help out. Please specify how many students you can bring with you in your car. By driving, you are also volunteering to chaperone Thank you so much in advance!

On a final note, due to a scheduling issue, I will be unable to accompany the class on the tour. Lauren Aspegren, our fantastic substitute for the day, will be going in my stead. If you have any questions, please let me know.

February Book Orders

Scholastic book orders for February are due tomorrow (Monday, 2/6) by 5:00pm either online or in person to me. I will plan to submit orders tomorrow evening. This will give us the best chance of having books arrive before the long Presidents Day weekend break in a couple of weeks.

If you have ordered online in the past, your child may still have a $3 credit toward the purchase of a book for the class. Have him/her see me tomorrow if they’d like to use the gift certificate for a book in the February orders.

Field Trip Tomorrow

Just a quick reminder that tomorrow is our field trip to Mission San Juan Bautista. We will leave at 8:30 and should return back to school around 2:00. Students will remain at school for the rest of the day and then be dismissed at their regular time. Please remember to send your students wil a sack lunch and a snack that he/she can carry and dispose of easily before we enter the mission. Students should also dress in layers as the weather looks like it will be nice, but it could change, and wear comfortable shoes. Cameras are allowed but are the sole responsibility of the owner. To help your child prepare for our voyage, please also ensure that he/she gets plenty of sleep tonight and has a hearty breakfast in the morning. Let’s have a great trip!

January Curriculum Update

Last Thursday in Reading Workshop we wrapped up our unit on reading nonfiction and today we began the next unit, nonfiction research projects, that build upon everything students learned previously. This unit will be pretty short, but it emphasizes the research aspect of nonfiction, including how to synthesize complex information across diverse texts and how to work in the company of fellow researchers. A second component of this unit focuses on critiquing texts with analytical lenses and sharing research. Today students practiced developing a plan for research by recognizing commonalities in information presented in the table of contents and/or chapter headings on texts that deal with the same or similar topics.

In Writing Workshop we continue to work on nonfiction writing. We are currently in the drafting phase of this work and will move into the revision phase next week. Students worked on narrowing down their topic choice and developing the subheadings or sections that would make sense in their nonfiction books. They will use mentor texts to help them revise and organize their work in predictable ways. We will wrap up with editing, publishing and celebrating the work we’ve done probably during the first week of February.

We have begun to work more with spelling outside of the Reading and Writing Workshops now. Students received a list of homophones last Wednesday and had a quiz on Friday. Those students who showed proficiency with this list were given another list. They will have a quiz on Thursday after we return from our field trip to San Juan Bautista. Students who needed more practice with the original homophones list were given more time to practice and they will be quizzed again this Thursday.

In Social Studies we have been reading a lot of background information to help us with our simulated voyage from Boston to the various missions in California. After reading the information, students have been working in groups to fill out outlines that correspond to the background information sheets. Students have also been working in their groups, now called crews, to complete tasks related to the simulation. Today students needed to load up their ships with supplies to trade when they reach the missions. They had to take into account what was of value to the missions and needed to do some mathematics to calculate how much of each supply to bring. In our next lesson, crews will begin to set sail and start working on small mission reports.

Students finished up our Electricity and Magnetism science unit last Thursday. They received their I-Check for Investigation 4 and their final tests back on Friday. If you have not already, please sign your student’s tests and send them back as soon as possible. The class started the Rocks and Minerals unit with Ms. Watson today. They will go to Ms. Watson’s class every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months for this science unit. Ms. Watson reported that the class did a wonderful job today!

In Mathematics, we have been learning about long division (see previous post regarding this), angles, and coordinate grids. Tomorrow, students will practice using rectangular coordinate grids. Next week students will be introduced to coordinate grids on a larger scale and revisit long division again. Our unit test will be next Friday, January 27th. The following week we will begin a unit on fractions and probability.

SPECTRA Art continues to be wonderful. During our last meeting students worked on perspective drawings using colored chalk and the solar system. Tomorrow students will be making projects that connect to our study of the missions.

Music and PE have been going well also. I’ve gotten good reports from the PE teachers regarding student involvement and participation. The class has been doing a wonderful job with their recorder practice in general music. I have been in the room the past few sessions and have been very impressed. Ms. Hebert, the music teacher, tells me frequently what fun class we have and how much she enjoys working with such enthusiastic and committed students. The practice is paying off! Keep it up!

I think that about wraps it up. Please let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be in touch again soon!

Last Chance to Donate to PiE!!!!

If you have already donated to PiE, thank you. If you have not donated to PiE yet this year, this is your last chance to give to this year’s school campaign.

Please consider donating to PiE during our final “You Make The Difference” challenge. A generous donor has funded this grant, which will give our schools $50,000 but only if 300 families who have not yet donated give to PiE by January 27. “You can make the difference” by supporting PiE and helping us continue to fund classroom aides, science and the arts in elementary schools. PiE funds now make up more than half of the flexible spending at our school and we could not offer your children the quality education we do without your support of PiE. Although the “ask” for a family donation is $800 per child, donations of any amount are much appreciated and needed. Our district-wide goal is to have an additional 300 families donate by the end of the challenge grant, joining more than 4,000 families who have given to PiE already. Please take advantage of this last challenge grant and help PiE reach its goal. Go to www.papie.org/donate, or leave a check in the school office.