Monthly Archives: April 2016

TAG and 5th Writing: Big news!

Dear parents,

this post relates to all students who have me as their writing teacher, TAG 4th/5th AND 5th grade writing 4th block.

As of today, students have just been introduced to and have logged in for the first time to their very own learning blog! They are beginning to customize their blogs by changing the theme. As the rest of the year progresses (and into next year, for 4th graders) they will be able to use their blog as a public place to post their writing and reflections of their learning.

You can find your child’s blog by going to this website and finding your child’s name along the right hand side. Their name links to their blog!

I encourage you to have your child show you how to log in to their blog and what they anticipate using it for. Please, as always, let me know if you have any questions or concerns!

Math 5 Update

Dear families,

I hope this weather finds you well! This post relates to my 3rd block math class.

Our class has just started using Think Through Math, a personalized online supplemental math program. All students began by taking a “placement test”, an adaptive test that determined what areas of strength students have as well as any gaps or challenges in all the strands of math.

The program then will take them through a series of lessons with practices designed to build up their background knowledge and help them take on more challenging problems. Games, points and badges are built into the program for motivation, and students can even donate their points to a charity to give back to the world!

I have attached a copy of the parent letter that went home today. Your child has a unique login with username and password that he/she should have written on your letter. Please ask your child about it and have them show you how it works!

One way to support your child’s math development at home would be to encourage him/her to work on TTM (Think Through Math) at least one afternoon/evening per week at home for 15-20 minutes. Thank you for your support!

Think Through Math Parent Letter

Writing 5 Update

Dear families,

this post relates to my 4th block 5th grade writing class.

Students are busily planning their research paper drafts! They have gathered and organized information with a note-taking technology called Google Keep, and they are currently writing outlines to plan the organization of each of the sections of their research papers.

Due to scheduling constraints, for the weeks of April 11-15 and 18-22 we will have to pause on our writing projects to use our writing time to review some math, so that all students have time to be adequately prepared for their math SOL. During that time, I’ll encourage students to continue writing on their own each day. I’ll be giving them more information and getting back in touch as this week ends.

Presently, we are in the middle of a word study unit, and students are really thinking through the parts of the words and the meanings of the roots that are in them! We have our word study test this Friday, April 8. We will have word study homework today (Monday) and Wednesday, April 6.

As always, please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or concerns.

TAG 4/5 Writing Update

Dear families,

this post relates to the 2nd block 4th/5th grade TAG Writing class.

This week students are beginning to build drafts of their research essays. Due to scheduling constraints, for the weeks of April 11-15 and 18-22 our class time will be used for math review to help all students prepare for their math SOL tests. This means that we will be pausing on our research projects for those two weeks. Please encourage your child to continue writing on his/her own for those two weeks. More info and ideas will be forthcoming at the end of the week.

Ms. Brannigan came today, and she has given the students a few assignments that will be due on Tuesday, April 26, and they are described below.

  1. Create 7 Wordles, one for each of the terms below.
    1. There should be a wordle for each of: subject, predicate, noun, pronoun, verb, adjective, preposition
    2. Each wordle should have:
      1. A definition for that term, with each word separated by hyphens (-)
      2. 15-20 examples of that term
  2. Write 6 sentences from your reading each week.
    1. I will provide students a template that they can use to write the sentences from their reading (they don’t have it yet but I’ll give it to them tomorrow)
    2. Separate and label the subject and predicate in each sentence
    3. Identify the part of speech that each word in the sentence is (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, pronoun, preposition, conjunction, interjection)

She also asked the students to think about a grammar story that she’ll have them write after the 26th. Students will be writing a story using the different parts of speech as the “characters”, so she has asked the students to start brainstorming for the theme they would like to use for their stories.

Thank you for all your support! As always, please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.