Week 29: Bar and Line Graphs, Mysteries, and MSP practice

Welcome to Week 29! 

We need to send out a huge THANK YOU to all of the parents and families that helped out during our Giving Back Day.  The entire day was a huge success.  We couldn't have done it without the parents who attended, the food that families donated, and the flexibility of everyone to pickup their student late at night.  Thanks for making this such a great event!

On to the week:

In reading this week we are going to continue to work with our mysteries. While still focusing on the components of a mystery, we are spending a lot of time working on how to write a complete answer. Students are being asked to use their written response rubric to check to see if their responses are complete.  A complete written response will include writing in complete sentences, using the stem of the question to start the response, providing text evidence to support an answer, and an explanation of the evidence.  Students are struggling to provide evidence from the text. To provide text evidence, students need to use a specific example from the text to explain their answer.  If you are interesting in seeing a copy of the rubric, please email Mrs. Therriault and she can send you one.  Students will continue to have reading homework this week. It is our expectation that students do the reading and start their reading comprehension packet at home. Students are given time in class to meet with a group, discuss the story, finish any work and fix past responses. Student work will not be checked off as completed until all mistakes have been fixed and resubmitted to Mrs. Therriault.

We are also working with some MSP type questions during our reading block. Such work will include a short passage (fiction, non-fiction and poetry) with multiple choice questions and short answer responses. We are using these activities to practice writing complete responses, as well as to learn test taking strategies.  Students are learning to read the questions before reading the passage, underline key words or concepts, circle dates, and star information that might be related to a question.  By helping the students to be more active readers, we are giving them skills to understand and remember what they read.  This work will be done as a whole class, as well as small groups.

In math this week we are going to hit our final chapter before full-time MSP practice begins.  This week we will be looking at survey data and how we can use that data to create a bar and line graph.  In addition, we will be learning about mean, median, mode, and range.  In addition, some students will be working on strengthening their math skills during our RTI sessions.  We are hoping that if we can identify deficiencies, complete some extra tutoring and practice, that this will help each of our student be successful on the upcoming MSP.

We are also starting our final science unit of the year.  We are concluding science with a look at variables.  We will be identifying independent and dependent variables and the affect that those variables have upon an investigation.  We will have three fun, but valuable lessons over the course of the next three weeks.  In addition, we are going to continue asking our students to practice writing questions, hypotheses, and conclusions as good practice for the science MSP. 

That's it for now.  Please let us know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,

Allyn and Alaina