Now for our week...
Well, as you know...the week started a little rough for me, but I am happy to report I am fully recovered! I was very fortunate that Mrs. Janik made her return to the classroom just in time to substitute for me, so lots of excellent teaching and learning went on while I was at home!
In Language Arts this week we began a new novel titled King of the Wind. The kids are really loving this novel and they hate that we have to stop to "do work" about it! :-) We focused on character traits and the kids wrote a paragraph using examples from the book to support their thinking. We have also been focusing on the vocabulary used in this novel. The kids have been marking unfamiliar words, discussing their meaning in small groups, and then verifying the meaning using the dictionaries. I LOVE this assignment because it helps the kids to see that you can indeed read a novel without looking words up, but how enlightening it is when you take time to find out what those words mean! I think they've been pleasantly surprised!
In Writing we are beginning to focus on two other traits of writing...word choice and voice. This is a fun one to teach! Today the kids did a writing assignment all about a hershey kiss...they did an amazing job! Here are a few excerpts from their writing...they could not use the words chocolate or candy...trust me, you're going to be headed to the store to get some after reading this....
YUM
a hershey kiss...
a masterpiece, tastes
better by the minute, circular
base, endless delicioushappiness,
mouth watering, un-nutritious, volcano,
droplet, teardrop, mouth drooling, crinkling
wrapper, cocoa treat, cone, teasing/pleasing,
fatty food, stomach tingling, scrumptious,
motivating me to gobble it up, tag...flag, YUM!
In Math we are into geometry...if I even tried to list all of the vocabulary we're covering you'd still be reading tomorrow...but here are some important ones: prism, pyramid (and the differences between the two), cone, cylinder, quadrilateral, rhombus, trapezoid, parallelogram...and the list goes on! We made 2D and 3D shapes using toothpicks and marshmallows...so fun! This helped to clarify the prism/pyramid debaucle!! We will stay in geometry through next week and then head into fractions and decimals.
In Science we are all over the place!! The kids did an investigation while I was gone about different types of soil. They looked at loam, humus, and clay and observed the different properties. They saw a video All About Soil and brought soil from home. We used that soil to create the perfect compost pile...some good soil, newspaper strips, orange peels, and potato peels...yum. Our worms are happy and busy decomposing! We spent one whole morning reading about worms and observing the worms...the kids were surprised by many of the facts about worms...so was I! We placed our worms in their new homes and we will keep an eye on the compost and our slimy friends. We are going to be investigating which type of soil is best for planting and doing an experiment to test our predictions. We will also be discussing renewable and nonrenewable resources and "dip" into the water cycle a bit!
Let's see...what have I forgotten?! We are two letters away from knowing all of the capital cursive letters. More assignments are being required in cursive and their cursive improves weekly!
And last, but certainly not least....my new segment titled...
"Who in the World Reads our Blog?!?!"
We have a reader in South Korea...hello Mr. Lee (Grace's Dad)!!
And Ms. Kim's sister reads our blog in Toronto, Canada...so hello to Grace's aunt! :-)
How cool is it that we are all over the globe?!
