Mallen's Monday Memo April 27, 2015

Monday Memo

April 27, 2015

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We will be map testing this week. We also are treated to a visit from Dirk Vanderlinden, from the Belmond Independent, who will talk to us about what makes a good ad and from that we will start next week on creating our ads!

This week in Reading we are finishing up on our Nature:  Friend or Foe unit. We will be reviewing the concept of adverbs and prepositional phrases this week during our grammar time. We have a spelling list that reviews words we have this unit and it is attached to this memo. We will also be reading two different stories working on the skills of comprehension, vocabulary, and will be reviewing suffixes and prefixes and what their meaning adds to a word. The students are to have read Sarah, Plain and Tall by Thursday. I am excited to say that most students have gone on to read Skylark, Caleb’s Story and the next one is More Perfect than the Moon. I had lent that book out to a student last year and didn’t get it back and it is not at our school library anymore. It is a good book, and it is at the Belmond Library should any student wish to read it. Their next book for May, due May 15^th, is a library book of their choice.

In Math, we are working on interpreting division word problems as a number of groups of a known and unknown size and interpreting and finding whole number quotients and remainders to solve one step division word problems. We will also be doing our map testing during part of our math time, for three days, so we may not get all done. We will also be working on our daily multiplication pages and our daily review.

We will be map testing for three of our science periods this week. When we resume science, we will be working on the questions to review our rocks and minerals unit. It has been fun taking a look at some of the student’s rock collections!

As always, if you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to give me a call!

Have a great week!
Chris Mallen

Phone:  515-444-3093 (Home)   515-444-4300 ext. 326 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo April 20, 2015

Monday Memo

April 20, 2015

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  We finished the Iowa Assessments last week! This year we only did two reading tests, two math tests, and a social studies and science test. We didn’t test over an hour each of the three days. The students were treated to a snack and milk each day. This week we will be doing the MAP tests, which are a computerized test. It may be next week before we get to it. We are also going to be starting our ads that we create for the Belmond Independent. It is always a fun activity for the kids and once they are published in the paper, we will receive a copy for each student to take home to youJ So, we will be keeping busy these final weeks!

This week we are starting a new story about frontier life and the effects a drought had on their life. I am sure many of you will remember reading the wonderful book Sara, Plain and Tall. This excerpt that we will be reading comes from the second book in the series entitled Skylark. We will be covering a variety of skills throughout this chapter. We will be talking about Comprehension, Vocabulary, Sequencing, Word Roots, and working on the parts of speech part of the dictionary. Our grammar this week is over prepositional phrases. Our spelling words are attached to this memo.

On April 15^th, I gave the students their next RC book. The book is mentioned above. It is Sara, Plain and Tall. I appreciate you having them read each night for 20 minutes!! I was so pleased with how well most of the students did reading their RC book for April 15^th. This was the first time this year, the majority passed the RC quiz! I am thrilled!! Let’s do it again on April 30^th and this time everyone pass their quiz!!

For math this week we will be working on representing numerically 4D dividend division with divisors of 2,3,4, and 5, decomposing a remainder of up to 3X. We will also be solving division problems with a zero in the dividend or in a quotient. Again, thanks for working on those multiplication facts with the students each night. It truly makes their math that much easier! We are still working on our daily fact sheets and our daily reviews!

We tested over our earthquake and volcano unit on Friday. I sent the results home with your child. This week we are starting a unit on rocks and minerals. We will be answering a few questions this week. Those questions are: What are Minerals? What are Rocks? What is the Rock Cycle? Hopefully by the end of this week, the students will have some answers to those questions.

I hope everyone has a great week!! As always, please call with any questions/concerns!! Thanks for all you do for your children!

Have a great week!
Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home)  444-3093    (School)  444-4430 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo April 20, 2015

Monday Memo

April 20, 2015

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  We finished the Iowa Assessments last week! This year we only did two reading tests, two math tests, and a social studies and science test. We didn’t test over an hour each of the three days. The students were treated to a snack and milk each day. This week we will be doing the MAP tests, which are a computerized test. It may be next week before we get to it. We are also going to be starting our ads that we create for the Belmond Independent. It is always a fun activity for the kids and once they are published in the paper, we will receive a copy for each student to take home to youJ So, we will be keeping busy these final weeks!

This week we are starting a new story about frontier life and the effects a drought had on their life. I am sure many of you will remember reading the wonderful book Sara, Plain and Tall. This excerpt that we will be reading comes from the second book in the series entitled Skylark. We will be covering a variety of skills throughout this chapter. We will be talking about Comprehension, Vocabulary, Sequencing, Word Roots, and working on the parts of speech part of the dictionary. Our grammar this week is over prepositional phrases. Our spelling words are attached to this memo.

On April 15^th, I gave the students their next RC book. The book is mentioned above. It is Sara, Plain and Tall. I appreciate you having them read each night for 20 minutes!! I was so pleased with how well most of the students did reading their RC book for April 15^th. This was the first time this year, the majority passed the RC quiz! I am thrilled!! Let’s do it again on April 30^th and this time everyone pass their quiz!!

For math this week we will be working on representing numerically 4D dividend division with divisors of 2,3,4, and 5, decomposing a remainder of up to 3X. We will also be solving division problems with a zero in the dividend or in a quotient. Again, thanks for working on those multiplication facts with the students each night. It truly makes their math that much easier! We are still working on our daily fact sheets and our daily reviews!

We tested over our earthquake and volcano unit on Friday. I sent the results home with your child. This week we are starting a unit on rocks and minerals. We will be answering a few questions this week. Those questions are: What are Minerals? What are Rocks? What is the Rock Cycle? Hopefully by the end of this week, the students will have some answers to those questions.

I hope everyone has a great week!! As always, please call with any questions/concerns!! Thanks for all you do for your children!

Have a great week!
Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home)  444-3093    (School)  444-4430 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo April 6, 2015

Monday Memo

April 6, 2015

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful Easter break! It is so nice to be enjoying spring!! It seems like we waited a long time for it to come…

This week we are starting a new story about the wildfires at Yellowstone. Again, it goes perfectly with our theme:  Nature:  Friend or Foe. The story talks about the damage the wildfire caused and the good things that came from that. We will be working on the following skills:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Main Idea, Supporting Details, and analogies.  The grammar lessons this week are over writing with adjectives. We will also discuss the use of the words good and well. The spelling words are attached to this memo.

Just a reminder that your child has a library book for their RC book, which is due to be tested by April 15^th. I appreciate you having them read each night for 20 minutes!!

For math this week we will be working on determining whether a whole number is a multiple of another number. We will also be exploring properties of prime and composite numbers to 100 by using multiples.

We are starting a new unit in Science this week. We will be talking about volcanoes and earthquakes. It goes nicely with our nature theme in reading.

I hope everyone has a great week!! As always, please call with any questions/concerns!! Thanks for all you do for your children!

Have a great week!
Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home)  444-3093    (School)  444-4430 Ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org