Dear Families,
The Zearn online math program is really a strong math support for your child and we encourage its use both at school (in differentiation and extension) and at home (for practice and review).
Some students have devoted quite a lot of attention to practice on the program and I wanted to share some progress notes. In class we have worked through 2 Eureka Units. The Zearn program is aligned to these. There is also some significant correspondence between the number of completed lessons by students and their overall success in math this year.
Of our 27 students, looked at in roughly quartiles, the completion ranges have been between 0-2 lessons (7 students) and 11 - 21 lesson (6 students). The rest of the students lie in the large average range of 5 - 10 lessons completed.
There are 45 lessons available for the combined "Missions (Units)" 1-2. Student didn't begin the program until October 4. To this point I have provided approximately eight 20-30 minute sessions for students to use the program during math differentiation time (the time varied for each student) and the students had the option to do Zearn in our computer lab time for roughly 20 minutes most Tuesdays.
Please ask your child how many lessons they have completed and I encourage you to sit down one evening and see how the program works with her or him. I think a helpful goal would be for students to complete about 2 lessons per week at home. Especially on days there is minimal Eureka math homework, I'd suggest students spend about 20 minutes on the program and balance this with 20-30 minutes of their personal reading. If your schedule isn't full with other activities, Wednesdays would be a perfect day to knock out one lesson anyway.
Kudos to these 7 students for their extra commitment to their math studies using Zearn:
Isaiah, Will, Luke, Julia, Greyson, and Madelyn.
Kind regards,
Mr. Hagstrom
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Academic Calendar and Connections for the week of January 3
Happy New Year - Welcome back letter from teacher (see earlier post).
Planners - Students wrote math and Language Arts planning notes. Parents and guardians, you may wish to review your child's planner together with your son or daughter..
Tuesday, January 3, 2017
Planners - Students wrote math and Language Arts planning notes. Parents and guardians, you may wish to review your child's planner together with your son or daughter..
Math: Module 3 - Fractions - Pretest. Students were awarded class stickers for their independent progress in the Zearn online math program. Please look for the related post with some helpful progress information. No specific math homework, however 20 minutes of math on Zearn is encouraged.
Science Project Notes & Link
Science Project Notes & Link
Language Arts: Book Report No. 2 on a historical non-fiction, or historical fiction assigned. Hand-outs provided, we read through an example, and we spoke of expectations. The homework assignment won't be given a grade-score, but it will be evaluated, shared, and discussed in class both with peers and myself. Planners were marked. The students will have 6 weeks to do the report and it's due February 16. A copy is available on Mr. Arthur's site (linked here).
Wednesday, January 4
Math: Introduction to Fractions: Fraction Terms, Rules of Addition and Subtraction, Representing +/- of fractions in drawings. Rewriting Fractional expression using multiplication, Eureka Lesson 2 no.s 1-3 in class. HW Zearn math 20+ minutes
Homework:
Zearn Math 20 + Minutes;
Reading; Song lyrics Extra Credit for "Reader's Response" Week 16, A space has been added to the bottom of Reader's Response 16 to share the lyrics. Extended lyrics deadline: Sunday.
Writing: We examined two student writings with an eye toward how to write the introduction and structure the paragraphs of a descriptive writing essays. Students rewrote their introductions from their first draft.
Thursday, January 5
Math: Equivalent Fractions, Lesson 1
Zearn Computer Math Learning
Perennial Math Group with Mr. Morris (thank you, Tim).
Math Homework: Zearn 20+ in Mission 3 beginning with Equivalent Fractions in place of worksheet.
Writing: Students did a descriptive writing sample essay with a title: "A Place to Have Fun"
Conversation starter: Ask about what we read about Sumika in Weedflowers.
Math: Fractions. Return to Unit 2. Showing relationships between improper fractions and mixed numbers, how to show addition of improper fractions on a number line, how to see improper fractions as the sum of equivalent partial fractions, and draw them in pictures.
Students who skipped the minimum Zearn requirement for yesterday, were requested to attend to that as homework this weekend. Others were invited to work on it optionally, including to return to earlier skipped lessons.
Addison G. Glad to see you're stepping up to Zearn from back east😄
Math Homework: Zearn 20+ in Mission 3 beginning with Equivalent Fractions in place of worksheet.
Writing: Students did a descriptive writing sample essay with a title: "A Place to Have Fun"
Conversation starter: Ask about what we read about Sumika in Weedflowers.
Friday, January 6
Math: Fractions. Return to Unit 2. Showing relationships between improper fractions and mixed numbers, how to show addition of improper fractions on a number line, how to see improper fractions as the sum of equivalent partial fractions, and draw them in pictures.
Students who skipped the minimum Zearn requirement for yesterday, were requested to attend to that as homework this weekend. Others were invited to work on it optionally, including to return to earlier skipped lessons.
Addison G. Glad to see you're stepping up to Zearn from back east😄
Writing: We examined two student writings with an eye toward how to write the introduction and structure the paragraphs of a descriptive writing essays. Students rewrote their introductions from their first draft.
Science Projects
Our Class did a spectacular job developing team and individual PowerPoint presentations from our non-fiction science reading unit principally on endangered animals. One each was presented throughout the months of November and December as time allowed and teams of students' evaluated each other's using rubrics on ten points. There were many outstanding projects and these have been posted on line in a folder of shared materials that you can access from the "Helpful Links" at the right. The Presentations are in the Science Presentations folder. To preview an example of the fine work our students did, here is Madelyn, Marika, and Isabelle's presentation on Penguins. To see the fun presentation transitions, I recommend downloading the file first and playing it on your device.
Bravo!
- Mr. Hagstrom
Happy New Year!
Dear Students (and families),
We begin the New Year after building together a strong, kind, and thoughtful community in our classroom. I appreciate all of your efforts, (often) bright and smiling faces, and regular consideration for others. I can't wait to begin anew and see how we even sharpen and soften our work and approach.
By this I mean that we have much to dig into and we need to be smart about that to be able to use our time well. At the same time, however, we need to be reflective - to look at how we do our work and learning - and to reaffirm these ideas of being kind, helpful, and open-minded as we do it. Sometimes this means we do things slowly on purpose to get it right.
My holiday was a nice and relaxing time. I had family in town and we enjoyed little Blake being his amazing self and we made a couple trips into the Seattle area, including a visit to Wunderkind Lego coffee shop and my first island trip visit to Bainbridge for a day. My mom made some favorite food from my childhood - Swedish Chili - and we ate lots (too many perhaps) of yummy cookies and desserts, including ridiculously good and pretty elegant Bundt Cakes (thanks, you-know-who). I drank lots of my favorite beverage - coffee at Starbucks (thanks for those cards). In fact all the gifts I received was basically overwhelming and I am humbled and grateful at you and your families' kindness. Cheers to you. I hope your holidays were equally fun, memorable, and spent with people close and dear to you.
I found a little time to consider our next read aloud now that we have shared Wonder together. That's a tough act to follow, but my colleague, Mr. Arthur, recommended Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli and this does sound to be a gripping, powerful, and meaningful book. It has a male protagonist and is fast-moving, with some deep themes running through it. It is a historical novel that brings us into the period of World War II and has as a major theme the maltreatment of Jews in Europe at the time of the Nazis. I also thought of a different wonderful book that involves a young female protagonist closer to home. It's called Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata. This will be an important addition to our study of American History. So we will be able to do our reading aloud, alternating between these two texts and using both like diving boards for rich conversations about books. Prepare to be amazed.
I so look forward to seeing each of you!
Welcome back,
Mr. Hagstrom
We begin the New Year after building together a strong, kind, and thoughtful community in our classroom. I appreciate all of your efforts, (often) bright and smiling faces, and regular consideration for others. I can't wait to begin anew and see how we even sharpen and soften our work and approach.
By this I mean that we have much to dig into and we need to be smart about that to be able to use our time well. At the same time, however, we need to be reflective - to look at how we do our work and learning - and to reaffirm these ideas of being kind, helpful, and open-minded as we do it. Sometimes this means we do things slowly on purpose to get it right.
My holiday was a nice and relaxing time. I had family in town and we enjoyed little Blake being his amazing self and we made a couple trips into the Seattle area, including a visit to Wunderkind Lego coffee shop and my first island trip visit to Bainbridge for a day. My mom made some favorite food from my childhood - Swedish Chili - and we ate lots (too many perhaps) of yummy cookies and desserts, including ridiculously good and pretty elegant Bundt Cakes (thanks, you-know-who). I drank lots of my favorite beverage - coffee at Starbucks (thanks for those cards). In fact all the gifts I received was basically overwhelming and I am humbled and grateful at you and your families' kindness. Cheers to you. I hope your holidays were equally fun, memorable, and spent with people close and dear to you.
I found a little time to consider our next read aloud now that we have shared Wonder together. That's a tough act to follow, but my colleague, Mr. Arthur, recommended Milkweed by Jerry Spinelli and this does sound to be a gripping, powerful, and meaningful book. It has a male protagonist and is fast-moving, with some deep themes running through it. It is a historical novel that brings us into the period of World War II and has as a major theme the maltreatment of Jews in Europe at the time of the Nazis. I also thought of a different wonderful book that involves a young female protagonist closer to home. It's called Weedflower by Cynthia Kadohata. This will be an important addition to our study of American History. So we will be able to do our reading aloud, alternating between these two texts and using both like diving boards for rich conversations about books. Prepare to be amazed.
I so look forward to seeing each of you!
Welcome back,
Mr. Hagstrom
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