Dear Star Fox Community,
We need to begin this newsletter again with a big THANK YOU to all the parents who helped us design gingerbread houses and/or helped make our Winter Festival celebration such an amazing feast of foods from different countries around the world. We truly appreciate all your support!
In the new quarter we will enjoy several field trips that will enhance our study of Taiwan and volcanoes in science. We look forward to these trips as “classrooms without walls” in the next few months. In the past we have visited an aboriginal museum, the Fire Safety Museum, and the fumaroles on Yangmingshan Mountain. Once dates are confirmed, more information will be forthcoming.
Language Arts
We will continue to explore more poetic tools as we continue to add poems to our personal anthologies. We will learn about metaphors, repetition, and personification. Students will also write try writing couplets, cinquains and shape (concrete) poems to experiment with different forms of poetry.
It will be a busy month of writing as students will also write for different purposes this month. We will begin the month with procedural writing. Students will write a short “how to” piece to explain or give directions, as well as informational paragraphs for nonfiction writing on topics that feature Taiwan.
Reading
We continue to look more closely at plot from different plot structures to determining important events to understanding cause and effect events. We will use mind maps as tools to organize our thinking.
As a means of modeling the importance of schema, fluency and listening to our inner voice as we read, I will share a new read aloud book with the class. The book titled Go Free or Die is about Harriet Tubman’s life. This story also introduces students to the genre of biography, which will be a focus in the fourth quarter.
To further practice fluency, we will decide on scripts to perform to an audience. This is a wonderful opportunity for students to not only practice speaking in front of an audience, but also to work collaboratively and creatively. Once roles are assigned we will set a date to present our plays.
Math
We will begin the third quarter with Unit 6, which focuses on basic geometry concepts, as well as the problem solving skills of acting out problems, modeling with manipulatives, using estimation and making a drawing. The overriding goals for this unit will be:
* Finding how many line segments can be drawn connecting given points
* Showing angles as turns with connected straws
* Constructing specified triangles and quadrangles
* Estimating the perimeter of a triangle and quadrangle
* Estimating the measures of angles
* Using symmetry to complete designs and
* Identifying and finding shapes
Topic Studies
To continue our yearlong study of communities, we will begin to examine the nation of Taiwan. We will discuss the role of government and Taiwan’s geography from the description of the land, culture, and its native people. This is an opportunity to share foods, folktales, and personal stories of times past and present in Taiwan. If you have knowledge and/or expertise on any aspects of Taiwan, we hope that you will share it with us at your convenience.
We plan to accomplish a lot this month! We look forward to sharing our work with you through displays, assignments and during portfolio conferences at the end of the quarter. We will begin this new quarter with reviewing our goals from the first semester in order to establish new goals for the new year. We will try to write SMART goals. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and timely. This will enable us to be more purposeful with our plans and better able to assess if we are successful with our goals!
Best wishes to you all throughout 2008!
Sincerely,
Kathy Sandler
