Welcome back!

I trust that everyone had an enjoyable vacation. I definitely did, but am glad to get back to routine and see all the children!  I would like to welcome Erin Marquis to our class!  Miss Marquis is a student teacher from Southern New Hampshire University and will be with us until early May.  This week, she has been learning our schedule and working with the students in small groups.

Recess

It is winter in Boscawen and students must have appropriate clothes to play outside in the snow.  Please make sure that your child has a winter coat, snow pants, hat and mittens or gloves.  They will not be allowed outside without these.  Even when they borrow from the nurse, it takes a considerable amount of extra time to go get them and return them during instructional time.

International Baccalaureate

Theme: Sharing the Planet

Central Idea: Peaceful conflict resolution leads to better quality of human life.

Key Concepts: Change, Perspective, Responsibility

Lines of Inquiry:

• Causes of conflict
• Ways people create change in societies
• How we live and work together peacefully

In the first 2 weeks, students will be inquiring about different types of conflicts and what causes them. Then we will be learning about some different conflicts in history and how they have created change (example: Civil Rights movement). We will finish out unit discussing ways to solve conflicts peacefully. We will begin adding important events from history to our class time line.

Reading

Students continue to work on choosing “just-right” books to read independently. They are also in reading groups. The books that we are reading right now are connected to our new IB planner, Sharing the Planet. Some of the titles are: The Drinking Gourd, Happy Birthday, Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges, My True Story, and Clara and the Freedom Quilt. Ask your child which book he or she is reading in class.

Writing

We are writing some fictional stories that are realistic. Stories should becoming more complex and longer. At this point, all stories should have a beginning, middle, and end, as well as a problem and solution. Students are including dialogue and more description when writing to help “paint a picture” in the reader’s mind. Remind and encourage your child to put effort into his or her spelling using sound-spelling strategies.

Math

We are learning about geometry and geometry concepts this month. This week we have been working with lines, line segments, parallel lines, and 3-dimensional shapes. Students used a straightedge to connect end points and construct polygons with and without parallel lines. Tuesday, students worked with partners to compare and contrast various quadrangles.  Wednesday, students worked in small groups creating polygons with their bodies. They learned that a hemisphere is 1/2 of a sphere and that we live in the Northern Hemishpere. Other important vocabulary words were vertex, vertices, faces, base, and edges. Checkout the pictures of the body shapes!

Activity idea for ongoing learning: Look for items at home that resemble 3-dimensional shapes and ask your child to identify the shape, edges, faces, base, and edges.

3-D Shapes: cylinder, cone, rectangular prism, pyramid, sphere, hexagonal prism, and triangular prism