This is "snow" ridiculous...when will I see your kids again?!

Hi, everyone...hope you have power and lots of food...looks like we're going to be stuck inside for awhile!


First...the movie that is in the post below did not turn out exactly how I wanted it to...I'll be trying again later...I attempted to put clips in it, but they didn't last very long, so I must have done something wrong...also, I tried to put one picture per kid, and deleted duplicates, but that didn't work either...so forgive me as I try to figure it all out!


We had a terrific week and this crazy snow worked in our favor for our Wax Museum. Neither the delay earlier in the week nor the early dismissal in the latter part of the week hurt our performances. We performed three times on our dress rehearsal day...for all third graders and the second grade magnet classes...your kids were wonderful that day...almost as wonderful as they were for you all on Thursday! I was so very proud of them...and am so glad that so many of you could attend.


But, believe it or not, we did other things this week, too...read on...


Language Arts
We started a novel unit this week...King of the Wind...this is a book that your kids are all going to enjoy...while we're reading we will be focusing on vocabulary, as well as author's tone, character's motivation, and much, much more. I will be requiring all students to look into the book for examples to support their thinking...this is extremely important! Although I know through our literature discourse that your child understands, an MSA examiner will not, and the only way your child can "show what he/she knows" is to use details from the text to support their answers in a written answer. (OK...I'll get down off my soapbox now.) :-)

We are also working on using quotation marks correctly in their writing. We are finding examples, writing conversation, and next week we will be viewing famous people's quotes to complete our work with quotation marks.

We have moved our focus in writing to the trait of "voice"...this really goes hand in hand with "word choice" and most of my students use a very distinct voice when writing! We will be analyzing pieces of writing for the trait of voice and scoring them so that the kids can see great examples and not-so-great examples...helps them to identify their own "voice" in their writing.

Math
The kids took their Quarter 2 post test this past week...these documents are "secure" so I cannot send them home, but I have shared them with the kids...they know what they got on the pretest and what they go on the post test...every single kid made improvement. If you are curious about these scores, I am happy to share them with you.

We are moving into division...and again, I will be grouping the kids based on their pretests...some of our students know how to long divide, but most do not...all of the students need to learn how to estimate when dividing...the strategies change with this operation. PLEASE continue to have your child work on his/her math facts...without the multiplication facts, long division is even harder! (and it looks like they'll have some extra time for facts this weekend...so please encourage (or require) this!!)

Science
We will be continuing our study of rocks...this past week we conducted scratch tests to determine the hardness of minerals. The kids worked with four different minerals and could put them in order using a fingernail scratch test, and a penny. After the fingernail scratch test, they were able to determine that talc and graphite were both SOFTER than a fingernail. After trying to scratch the minerals with a penny they were able to determine that the calcite was SOFTER than a penny...and then when they turned the mineral ON the penny, they found that feldspar was HARDER than the penny as it left a scratch on the copper penny! They were introduced to MOH's scale of hardness and know that rock scientists use this as a measure of hardness for minerals.

Please check out the important dates in the post from last Friday...and hopefully I'll see your kids sooner than later...we have SNOW much to do! :-) Stay warm!