Welcome Back!

Dear Parents,

Welcome back! I hope you had fun with your students over break. As I wrote evaluations for your students this past week, I had a chance to reflect on how blessed I have been to get to know each one of them during the past quarter. Their energy and enthusiasm are contagious, and their insights are often deep. I am looking forward to spending the rest of the school year helping them discover math and science.

As we begin the second quarter, I thought you would appreciate an overview of what I am planning. First off, quizzes and tests!  There will be three math tests and two science tests.  The math tests will be in the third, sixth and ninth weeks, while the science test will be in the fourth and eighth weeks. They will also be having one or two short quizzes a week. These are designed to assess how well they understand concepts being covered and to make sure they are continuously reviewing what they have already learned.

Regarding science class, we will continue our study of electricity and then begin our study of the circulatory and respiratory systems. Each week, students will normally have two science homework assignments, one on Tuesday and one on Thursday. They should be bringing their science notebooks home, so please have them use their notebooks to help them with their homework.

In math class, we will continue our study of column multiplication and then move on to the related topic of area and perimeter of geometric shapes. This should help them visualize the multiplication they are learning. At the beginning of November, we will start on division! We will spend the rest of the quarter on division, including division with a remainder and long division.

As for homework, we will continue to have math homework each night. I will be assigning students to work on their online math accounts for twenty minutes a night. If internet access poses any difficulties, please contact me so I can help make other arrangements for them to complete their homework.

Additionally, I will be assigning students to review their multiplication facts each night. This is extremely important because students need to know multiplication facts to understand division. In order to ensure your students’ success with our continuing study of multiplication and our upcoming study of division, please commit to reviewing the flashcards at home with them. Also, please sign their logs so I know they are getting the practice they need.

By now, the students are familiar with multiplying by 0,1,2,and 5. We have also been reviewing multiplication by 3 in class. Because the multiplication tables overlap, learning them gets easier as students study. For this reason, we will be studying three multiplication tables this week, 3, 4, and 7. Next week it will be 8, 9, and 12. After this initial exposure, we will be consistently reviewing our multiplication tables in class, and I will continue to assign some practice as homework.

Hopefully, this plan will help you understand where we are headed this quarter. Of course, if you have any questions at all, please contact me. My email is rwycklendt@archwaytriviumeast.org. I hope everyone has a great quarter!

Sincerely,

Rebecca Wycklendt