Week 8: The Conclusion of Maniac Magee, Multiplying Double Digit Factos, and starting our second writing piece

Welcome to Week 8!  We would like to thanks all those parents that took the time out of their busy days to spend 15 minutes with us and their student discussing the year so far, our assessment scores, and goals we have for the remainder of the year.  We find these quick meetings to be an imperative part of your students education.  Thank you for being here and talking with us.  On to the week...

In reading we are going to complete our first classroom novel Maniac Magee.  It's been a great story that the kids have truly enjoyed, but it has also given us many opportunities to train the kids in how to use reading comprehension strategies, forumlate questions and ideas in their journals, as well as discuss books in small groups.  As we finish this book we are also putting the finishing touches on this training.  As we move into new books we feel as though this first month of work will really pay off and allow each student to succeed in their reading journals, in groups, and find great enjoyment in reading.  In addition, we are going to continue grocking and will have our first grocking quiz this week.

In math, students will be reviewing multiplication with single digit factors and move into multiplying double digit factors.  This will entail learning the steps, carefully writing out problems, and quite a bit of practice.  Please be prepared to help your student practice the steps at home or to fix problems that may have been completed incorrectly.  Also, if you are noticing that your student is struggling through this chapter...I highly recommend checking out his or her ability to use the multiplication facts.  If they don't have the basic facts down, this chapter and the two after this will be increasingly difficult and frustrating.  We highly recommend a website called Multiplication Madness (linked on our classroom website) to get practice and to test your kids. 

Finally, in writing students will be choosing a piece to begin writing a rough draft.  They have each come up with three or four ideas for stories over the course of the past 2 weeks.  Now they need to choose one of those topics to begin writing a rough draft. 

Thanks again for all your support during conference week.  Please let us know if you have any further questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Allyn and Alaina