Mallen's Monday Memo October 27, 2014

Monday Memo

October 27, 2014

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a nice weekend. We were busy last week working on our map testing. We do three tests that run about an hour each. The tests are in math, reading, and language arts. That put us behind with a few things so we will be catching up this week as well as starting a new story in reading. On Friday, we will be parading our costumes over at the care center and Belle Haven around 1:30, which should get us back to the school in time for the annual school costume parade. The Fall party will start after the parade. I thank Mrs. Andrade and Mrs. Gonzalez for the food and beverage for our party!!

In Reading this week, we will be starting a story entitled The Very Important Day. This story is about a family who studies hard to become American citizens. It is a very enlightening story as to the process of becoming a citizen of America. We will be working on the following skills this week:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Multiple meaning words, reading a news article, and inferencing. We will continue working with singular and plural nouns and the spellings that go with making singular nouns plural nouns. Today we will be testing over last week’s spelling words, with the spelling test for last week’s words being tomorrow. I will send home the new words on Wednesday.

In Math, we will be working on solving additive comparing word problems modeled with tape diagrams. I hope to also begin working on solving multi-step word problems modeled with tape diagrams and assessing the reasonableness of answers using rounding. We will also continue on our daily reviews and our daily multiplication facts. They are getting better with those, and I truly appreciate your time and effort in helping them work on them for at least 5 minutes each night. It will help them in math enormously for the rest of their school career!

We will be testing this week in Science. If things go as planned, I will be sending home a study guide with the students over the animal adaptations chapter on Wednesday, with the test being on Thursday. This has been a very fun chapter talking about the difference between instincts and learned behaviors and about the different adaptations animals have to survive.

As always, please call/email with any questions/concerns!

Have a great week!!

Chris Mallen

Email:  cmallen@frontier.com

Phone:  (Home)  444-3093   (School)  444-4300 ext. 336

Mallen's Monday Memo October 13, 2014

Monday Memo

October 13, 2014

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Last week we enjoyed our fire truck rides and the information we got from the firemen!! We truly appreciate the service they offer for our community! We also were entertained by some older students telling the students about 4H! I think many of the students were interested in joining one of the 4Hclubs!!

This week we are beginning a new story in reading today. It is a story entitled Tonya’s Reunion. This story is about a girl who gets to know her parents better by going back to their birthplace. We will be learning a variety of skills this week including:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, using a graphic organizer to organize your thoughts, comparing/contrasting and making inferences. Our grammar lessons this week are on singular and plural nouns. Our spelling words have the long and short oo sound. The list is attached to this memo. On Wednesday, the students’ RC books quiz is due (Oct. 15). They were all given an Encyclopedia Brown book to have read and passed by the 15^th. Many of them have read a few of them. For those that haven’t, Wednesday is the day to have that done. As I said in prior Monday Memo’s, this was a book above some of the student’s reading lexile. I said I was fine with you reading it to them, a sibling, you a page them a page… I just like how they have to use some critical thinking to solve these cases! Then next book is one of my favorites and is a historical fiction book. It is called Bound for Oregon. My plan for this wonderful book is to read a chapter a day to them and have them go home and read a chapter each night. For some of them, it may require you reading it to them, as above. They will be listening to me read all odd chapters. We will be doing some activities over this story as well. We will have this book done and ready to be quizzed before the last day in October and so hopefully they will have a chance to read and pass one more quiz. By passing two quizzes a month, they get a 3 because that is our standard. If they pass more than 3 quizzes in the month, they will receive a 4 for part of their comprehension grade.

We will be finishing up on our NE region of the United States. I am sending home a study guide on Thursday, for the test that will be Friday. I truly appreciate your time in going through it with them.

This week in Math, we are working on using place value understanding to decompose to smaller units up to three times using the standard algorithm and apply the algorithm to solve word problems using tape diagrams. We will also be using place value understanding to fluently decompose to smaller units multiple times in any place using the standard subtraction algorithm and apply it to solve word problems using tape diagrams.

We are fortunate this week to have Counselor Johnson come two times this week!

As always, please call with any questions/concerns!

Have a great week!
Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)   444-4300 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo October 6

Monday Memo

October 6, 2014

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Last week was busy with Homecoming activities. The kids had a lot of interesting things going on last week as well. They had their first counselor class of the year with Counselor Johnson. They went to the outdoor classroom on Thursday. They participated in the annual fitness walk on Friday and attended the Homecoming parade on Friday. It was a busy week!

This week is a bit more normal. One thing they will be doing is listening to the 4-H presenters tell the kids about their program. The students are eligible to begin being in 4-H when they are in fourth grade. They will be listening to the presenters on Friday.

In Language Arts this week, we will be starting our second theme. This theme is entitled “American Stories”. The stories in the theme are all stories that talk about how our country formed.  Our first story is entitled Thomas and the Library Lady. This story is about a boy whose parents are migrant workers. They live in Texas for part of the year and Iowa another part of the year. It is a really good story that the children always enjoy! We will be talking about the following skills this week:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Contractions, and drawing conclusions. Our grammar skills this week talk about proper nouns. Our spelling words have the ou and schwa sounds in them and the list is attached to this memo.

In Social Studies we are continuing our work on the northeastern region of the United States. This week we will be talking about the industrial revolution, comparing the NE to the city of Mumbai, learning how to use a distribution map, and talking about how the Northeast is today. We will also be reviewing the vocabulary words from this unit.

This week in math we are going to be talking about solving multi-step word problems using standard addition algorithms, and using place value to understand how to decompose to smaller units. We are also doing a daily review and a multiplication sheet each day. Thank-you for working on those facts with your child each night!

Just a reminder that your child has an Encyclopedia Brown book to have read by October 15^th. I appreciate your support with having your child read for at least 15 minutes a night.

As always, please call with any questions/concerns!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home)  444-3093   (School)   444-3500 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org