Time is passing so quickly. I appreciate your time coming to the conference and hope you are proud of your child for the work he/she is putting into his/her learning. While a few could put forth better effort and strive for more than the minimum, I am excited to see the enthusiasm the students have for learning. As we approach Thanksgiving, I am thankful for the opportunity to get to know your children this year and spend time with them as they learn and grow.
Mākau ʻŌlelo (Language Arts) – We are in the midst of the novel, “Save Me a Seat” and are using this text to help students improve reading comprehension through inferencing and drawing conclusions. We are also learning how to craft higher level thinking questions. For writing, we are looking at the qualities of writing used on our grade level rubric and are practicing techniques to improve writing skills. Our current focus areas are clarity, purpose, voice, and structure.
Makemakika (Math) – Addition and subtraction are concepts that many have mastered and we will be moving into multiplication and division. There are students who understand the concepts, but still need to practice subtraction regrouping with zero. I have noticed that quite a few students do not have their multiplication facts through 12 committed to memory. This will cause some struggle as we move into multiplication, division, and especially fractions, so continued practice and mastery of these facts is critical to our next unit. We don’t have time to work on multiplication math facts in class, so support from home will greatly benefit your child and would be appreciated. Suggestions for practice were shared with the children.
Pilikanaka (Social Studies) – We have learned quite a bit about ahupuaʻa and early Hawaiʻi through class, a guest speaker, and learning journeys (field trips). We will wrap up the unit with a joint research project between a grade 3 and grade 4 class (our class and Mrs. Raletta’s class). We plan to begin the project the week of Nov 18 and finish before the end of the semester. Students will discover more about life in early Hawaiʻi.
I am working to get photos of activities and learning journeys uploaded for you to view. I haven’t decided on the best format yet, but am trying to keep the photos private and not upload them to the blog. I am thinking of putting them in folders in Google Photos and sharing the links with you, but will keep you posted when we figure out the best way to share them with you.