Wishing you a happy and healthy New Year!

Dear Families,

Thank you so much for attending our holiday party. The children were so excited to show all of you their dioramas and research reports. We are so proud of all their hard work and dedication to both assignments.

Today, the class wrote essays about the themes of The One and Only Ivan. Then, they watched "The Indian in the Cupboard." The children made a lot of connections to what they learned during this last social studies unit.

Our next read aloud is Our of My Mind by Sharon Draper. Please feel free to send your child to school with a copy to follow along. Just like our last read aloud, it is not mandatory to bring in a copy of the book.

We would also like to thank you for the generous gifts and for all of your contributions throughout the last social studies project.

We wish all of you a happy and a healthy New Year. See you in 2019!

Best,

Laura and Robyn

Spelling Words for Friday's Quiz

1. nervous
2. curious
3. obvious
4. miraculous
5. disastrous
6. enormous
7. generous
8. joyous
9. adventurous
10. numerous
11. ridiculous
12. mountainous
13. jealous
14. famous
15. mischievous

December Curriculum Update

Dear Families,

Although Winter Break is just a few weeks away, Class 4-312 continues to work very hard across all subject areas. Please take a few moments to read through each section below for an overview of our current curriculum plans.

Math
We have transitioned from multiplication into our division units. Students are learning how to divide numbers with 1-digit divisors, and we are dedicating a lot of time toward interpreting and evaluating word problems. Please encourage your child to show his/her work for math on all assignments. We have reviewed many strategies that students can use to understand word problems: underlining important information, rewriting the important information, drawing a picture, drawing a tape diagram, and checking for reasonableness.

As division heavily relies on students' fluency with their multiplication facts, please continue to review multiplication and division facts with your child when you have spare time.

Writing

This week, we entered the publishing stage of the Personal Essay. The personal essay is a five-paragraph essay that incorporates argument and narrative writing elements. The children were asked to write a thesis statement, or a personal opinion/claim about a topic or person in their lives. The goal is to support the thesis with three concrete reasons, along with accompanying details and personal experiences.

Furthermore, our students are learning how to structure an essay by using paragraphs (introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion) to organize ideas and to support a thesis statement. Ask your child about "TEEC," an acronym that helps us remember how to structure a strong body paragraph: Topic sentence, Evidence or Examples, Explain the importance of the evidence, and Concluding sentence.

The students are asked to apply various writer’s craft moves they have been learning since the beginning of the year, including descriptive language, dialogue, figurative language, sequencing phrases and transition words, similes, metaphors, and show, not tell. Additionally, students continue to practice all they know about the mechanics of good writing, which includes writing with correct punctuation and capitalization. We are excited for you to read your child's personal essay the next time you visit our classroom! 

Social Studies
We are continuing to learn about the theme and essential question of what it means to be free by studying the European migration to the New York area. As you know, we are currently learning about the Native Americans who lived in the New York area 400 years ago. After researching various aspects of Native American life, the class was broken up based on interest groups. Each group chose a different topic to research; the different group topics are food, family life, government, creation myths, and the European explorers. Our culminating project will be a series of dioramas, teaching the audience about the Native American way of life and the explorers who “found” the new land.

Thank you to all families who sent in supplies. We look forward to presenting our projects to you during the holiday party on December 20!

Reading
We continue to push students' thinking about reading through our daily read-aloud book, The One and Only Ivan, and by providing feedback to students based on their independent reading books. Please see today's other blog post about Weekly Reading Responses. Once the New Year rolls around, we will launch our first set of book clubs for the year, which provides the students with an opportunity to read and discuss a book with a small group of their peers and a teacher. More info to come in January!

Important Dates
Our publishing party/holiday celebration will be on Thursday, December 20, at 8:30am. We look forward to seeing you there!

Best,

R & L 

Weekly Reading Responses

As you know, students have a weekly reading response due each Monday. These reading responses consist of at least two paragraphs: the first paragraph is a summary of the book students are reading independently, and the second paragraph is the section in which students can demonstrate their deeper thinking by choosing a prompt from the Reading Response Bingo Board.

Today in class, we reviewed a model reading response based on our read-aloud text, The One and Only Ivan. As a class, we analyzed the elements that contribute to a strong response: a summary that outlines the main events of the book in sequential order; a response that includes character feelings, traits, and/or motivations; and a response that includes details from the text to support thinking. After reviewing the response together, we attached the model response to the inside-back cover of each student's Reading/Spelling Notebook for future reference. (The model response is also copied and pasted below.)

Over the next few days, please review your child's reading responses and comments with him/her and review the model response in the back of the Reading/Spelling Notebook. We appreciate your support in helping us to push students' thinking more deeply about their independent texts!

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Model Reading Response

         The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate is a book about a silverback gorilla named Ivan who lives in the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade and is owned by a human named Mack. Ivan can understand humans, but they cannot understand him. Ivan lives in his domain in the mall with Stella, an elephant who was taken from her family to live in the mall, and Bob, a dog. Later on in the story, Ruby, another elephant, joins the circus. Ruby asks Ivan about his childhood. Ivan tells her that when he was a baby, his family called him “Mud” because he was always drawing with mud in the forest. Later, Mack trains Ruby to do tricks, but Ruby starts to fight him because he is mistreating her. Trying to soothe Ruby from what she went through with Mack, Ivan decides to tell Ruby more about his past, such as when humans killed his parents. Then, Ivan decides to secretly start painting at night.   

Dear Diary,

I am very upset with Mack. The other day he brought me into the ring. He looped my feet with rope so that I could not run away and heavy chains hung from my neck. All he wanted me to do was learn the tricks, but I was exhausted. I thought he would see how tired I was by looking at me, but either he did not care or he did not notice. Still, he kept yelling at me and wouldn’t leave me alone. He tried to pull at me, but I refused to move. He took out a claw-stick and I think he wanted to hurt me with it. He was getting angrier and angrier at me for not listening, but at the same time, I was angrier and angrier by the minute. I was dead-tired. I did not want to listen to him. Shouldn’t he treat me with love and respect if he wants me to do something for him? Without me even realizing what I did, I used my trunk and  slapped him as hard as I could. He dropped the claw-stick and fell down on the ground and curled into a ball and howled a scary sound. I did it!!! I was so proud of myself for standing up and protecting myself. However, I am now a little worried. What if Mack is really angry at me? Will he retaliate? Will he do something worse to me?

                                                                                 Love,

                                                                                 Ruby