Week of April 8th, 2017 -18

Reminders for the Week

Mark your calendar for our annual Egypt Festival on Thursday, April 19. We will celebrate our host country, Egypt through music, dancing, food and grade level activities connected to themes. To add to the spirit of the day we invite you to wear a galabeya or perhaps clothes that reflect Egypt.

Come sample a variety of Egyptian dishes. Freshly baked baladi bread (from our very own mud brick oven) will be on sale for ES students during their recess and for MS & HS. Our Egyptian Food Festival is free for all elementary students, parents, teachers, and staff. Students will have an activity related to their Egyptian Culture curriculum. Looking forward to a great cultural experience.

We need your help!

Parents are an important part of our Egypt Festival. We would love your help if you're available at either lunchtime or the bread selling booth. Please sign up to help us if you can.

The Arabic and Egyptian Culture Department

READING

This week, readers in the third grade will focus on talking about their reading. They will review strategies, such as identifying the main idea and supporting details, that will help them engage in deeper conversations around topics of interest. Readers will be reminded of the qualities of great conversations and will get to practice in partnerships and small groups.



WRITING

This week we learn that when writers move on to other subject areas, writers don’t just leave their writing skills at the door. Writers carry those skills with them when they become scientists, anthropologists, and mathematicians. Specifically, writers make sure that they use what they know about planning well-organized information texts, whether they are writing a book in writing workshop or writing an article or a paper or a feature article in the social studies classroom.

We also look at how writers assess their own writing to see what works and what doesn’t work. One way they do this is by thinking, ‘Did I do what I set out to do?’ They reread to see whether the draft matches the plan for it – and if it doesn’t, they decide whether the plan it does follow works or whether the piece needs to be rewritten.


MATH

Our mathematicians will start a new unit this week which focuses on geometry and measurement word problems. They will begin with solving one- and two-step word problems covering a variety of topics studied throughout the year and including all four operations.

Students will gain further concentrated practice applying the Read, Draw, Write process for problem solving while also reviewing the range of strategies they’ve learned to find solutions. Through small group collaboration, discussions, and presentations, our mathematicians will have the opportunity to explain to their peers how they solved problems and respond to clarifying questions from their classmates about their work. This will lead us into discussions about accuracy and efficiency in problem solving, and allow for students to analyze and reflect on their own work.

Please continue to encourage your mathematician to read problems carefully, determine what they need to solve for, and to check their math work for accuracy and completeness.

SOCIAL STUDIES

This is the final week of our 'Shaping Communities' social studies unit. During the week students will be presenting their final project to their class. They are presenting one cultural aspect to the class in a format of their choosing. They will describe the cultural aspect and why it is important to their country. The research that they did earlier will help them to do this.