November 18-22

This week in language arts we began an accordion research project to wrap up what the students had been learning throughout the quarter.  Students chose a non fiction book to read. Then they identified the main Idea, new vocabulary, facts, and an evaluation.  We will present this week and rubrics will go home Wednesday.

We also learned about primary vs secondary documents and took a quiz on non fiction text structure.

We continue to read Holes and practice making inferences, predictions, asking questions, using context clues, making connections, etc.

In social studies we are still learning about the constitution and we focused on the three branches of government. The class is working on filling out the tree with specific information on each of the branches. We are using various resources to complete the tree. In computer lab, the students also worked on icivics.org to learn more about the duties and process of each branch through an interactive game.

The students all finished and submitted their PROBES this week. Rubrics went home in Friday folders. The class worked on this for several weeks gathering resources, conducting research, conferencing, planning out the format, and then creating the final piece. This will count for most of their writing grade. Below is an example of a level four, although the third page was not necessary.

Looking ahead:

The next two weeks are short.  

We will have school November 25-27, then off for Thanksgiving.

Then December 2-4 will be our last week before track out.

Report cards will be going home on December 4th and will have a slightly different look.

December 4th will also be our Polar Express day.  Student s can wear their pajamas to school and bring a stuffed animal as well. We will have hot cocoa and a few snacks as we watch the movie in the afternoon. In the morning we will read the book and do a few other hands on activities. Please have your child bring their ticket to school (sent home in Friday folders with info on it), we have a surprise that it will be needed for.... ;)

November 12-15

I'm so glad to be back, we've had a great week getting back into the swing of things. 

Here's a synopsis of what we did this week:

In SS we are learning about the constitution and early government. We will continue learning about government until the end of the quarter. We discussed what the colonists wanted in their government and compared it to how England ruled them.

In math we learned about various angles, rotating angles, and measuring angles. We learned about acute, right, and obtuse angles as well as how to measure them with a protractor.

In reading we have been studying non fiction text structure for the past week and learning abound how non fiction texts are set up. There are four main structures we learned about.

The students used this information to analyze the structure in the books they are reading.

Working hard. We also got 4 new boxes of books that we are working hard at sorting by level.

As we look for good fit books, some students are reading books that are too hard or too easy.  We went through lexile.com and used our lexiles to find some suggested books and also looked up the lexile of the books we were already reading.

In writing students finished their PROBES this week. Here is a great example of the finished product. Rubrics will be going home next week and I will send their notebooks home with them so you can see their finished product.

I'm baaaack!

After being home with my babies the past few weeks, I'm (almost) ready to come back to my big kids. I will be returning to work November 12th. I have missed my class and stopped in a few times to see them. They all have met Vella, but you all haven't, so I wanted to share a few pictures of our sweet new girl and her big brother.

Starting next week I will be blogging weekly with classroom updates. Enjoy the long weekend!