Weekly Update 3/14/16 - 3/18/16

Let us begin by saying what a joy it was to sit with you and your children to share and celebrate their many accomplishments this year. It was an opportunity for us to all reflect upon the immense growth that has taken place within these walls since August, and we are so grateful to have been given the time to do so. Please remember to send in your child's math assessment, signed, as well as the completed reflection sheet and their Coral Reef Research Book. We trust their work has been well celebrated at home and know that their hard work will (eventually) make its way to live at home permanently.

While we know most updates were given during conferences last week, we wanted to share a few things via the blog before parting ways for Spring Break.

Poetry has begun and we are excited to begin a "lighter" unit of writing that allows for more creativity and personal expression. In hopes of coming to school equipped with ideas each week, please partner with us in having your children use their Noticing Books to record observations and noticings. We'd like to see five sentences minimum and will collect these on your child's designated Book Day. This will be recorded on their agenda. We will continue to respond to Noticing Books as we did earlier in the year. Poetry will weave it's way into Reader's Workshop as well, and we look forward to having the crossover between Reader's and Writer's in the upcoming weeks.

As you've heard, we are tackling Unit 6 of Investigations in a slightly different format than before. We've joined forces with Mrs. Bolding and Mr. Smith's class and are splitting up each day to be more intentional with our differentiation. In this unit, emphasis will continue to be on solving Story Problems with larger numbers, identifying and manipulating numbers based on place value, and being able to work with the number 100. We will also be taking a closer look at subtraction, which is often trickier for most than addition.

We have no doubt that you heard about our exciting lesson in science on Friday -- a squid dissection! Thank you to Mrs. Rudisill and Mr. Casey for partnering with us in this endeavor and to the middle school students who led the dissection. Take a look at some pictures!

And on that note, Spring Break awaits and we hope you have a restful and fun week ahead! We'll see you back here after Easter!

A few reminders for the upcoming week:

• Palm Sunday Chapel this Friday -- please join us if you can! 
• This Friday, March 18th, is Camp Read a Lot! Similar to the Camp Read a Lot we hosted in fall, please have your child BRING a pair of pajamas to change into following chapel. Each student is allowed one lovie/pillow and please no sleeping bags -- we only have so much room! Thank you for your cooperation in this and we look forward to a day of reading!