This week, we have begun our first unit in math and will finish up with a test on Friday. Your child should know some "tricks" otherwise known as Multiplication Rules that they should apply to figure out if a number between 1 and 100 is prime or composite. The test tomorrow will have them identifying whether a number is prime, composite, even, or odd, as well as, explaining their thinking and how they know what type of number they are looking at. I encourage them to use their math notebooks so that they can see examples of explanations that I will be expecting from them.
Next week, and for quite a few weeks after that our focus in math will be on computation.
In reading, we have begun a class read a loud of Wonder by R.J. Palacio. This is a fantastic book and I believe the students are enjoying it as much as I am. To ensure everyone is listening to the story, the students have been keeping responses to questions that are asking them to make predictions about what will happen in the story as well as make connections to people, places, or times that an event in the story reminds them of something in their life or in another book they may have read. I am also pulling students back to do a reading preassessment with them so we can split up to work in groups soon.
In science, I am asking that they think like scientists and they have been running experiments. So far, we have done an experiment to see which brand of paper towel is the most absorbent, and tomorrow we will be testing which type of water dissolves an Alka-Seltzer tablet the fastest.
We have not started social studies yet, but I am looking to begin some of that next week during our reading block.
If you haven't already done so, please sign up on N-list. I am going to be needing copy parent(s) soon. N-list is the easiest way for me to coordinate this. If you need our class access code or email to sign up with, let me know and I will get the information to you. Thank you so much for your help!