Math, Social Studies, and Journaling

Parents- Please make sure your child is studying their basic facts at home!!  While we are doing Rocket Math at school, every student should still be practicing them outside of school.  This is fundamental to each child's math progress.  As story problems and computing get harder, a child will struggle if they don't know their facts.  Instead of being able to focus on solving the problem, they will spend their time trying to solve the facts needed to solve the problem.  The current math unit is on estimating and solving addition and subtraction problems.  This is difficult for those students that don't know their facts.

In Social Studies, we are learning about the Midwest Region.  This unit nicely follows the Iowa History unit.  Students are learning a lot about the area they live in.  If you have additional information that pertains to this unit, please share it with your child!

I have begun student journaling during Guided Reading.  For every entry a child writes, I write them back a letter responding to what they wrote and modeling what good writing looks like.  Please encourage your child to expand their thinking in the every day comments they make and writing they use.  There are many aspects to good writing.  Most students know some aspects really well, but have some area(s) that they can still improve on!