Oh dear...I'm late!

Sorry, everyone...its that whole "balancing Mommy and Teacher thing"...and Mommy won this weekend...

We had a great week last week and I want to tell you all about it...but first...a quick look into the week ahead...it is National Education Week at Urbana Elementary School...

MONDAY - UES students will write "I Love UES because..." or "If I were Principal..."
TUESDAY - we celebrate Reading...the PTA will have parents reading at lunchtime and I have invited any of you who would like/are available to read to our class that day as Mystery Readers. I heard from three parents, so the afternoon is full, but I still have plenty of morning spots if any of you are interested...just send me an email! I will be giving the kids clues to guess who our readers are for the day!
WEDNESDAY - Career Day...kids are supposed to come dressed up as what they think they'd like to be when they grow up...my students have a writing assignment to go with it, they will receive the details tomorrow and share it with us on Wednesday.
THURSDAY - Science Fair Day! My students will tour the Science Fair during school and you are welcome to come that evening to tour it yourselves!!
FRIDAY - School Spirit Day - we will all be wearing school colors!

One more thing before I get to the past week...a big THANK YOU to all of you for helping your children stay on track for getting their Science Fair projects turned in on time...I can't believe how many kids turned their projects in on Friday for extra credit...and I can't wait to spend the next few days learning about all of their projects!!

Now to the week...

Language Arts
We finished our work with the Junior Great Books story, The Master Cat. I had two amazing discussion groups to culminate this story analysis. I split the class in 1/2 and led the discussion with particular questions. It was great to get inside their brains and hear the wheels turn! They are becoming very good at supporting their thoughts with evidence from the story!!

This week we worked on a persuasive letter. The kids read an article in their Time For Kids magazine about how much sleep children need. I told them that YOU, their parents, were considering changing their bedtimes and that they needed to convince you how to change the time or not to change the time...using evidence from the article to support their opinion. They are still in the first stages of this letter filling out the graphic organizer, so we will continue this work this week. We are also going to continue typing the ELLA stories...I'm really hoping to finish them this week!

Math
We have been working on fractions...finding the fraction of a group of things, finding equivalent fractions, and simplifying fractions. Your kids got to look at their scored Quarter 1 post-tests this past week. They were reminded of their pre-test scores, so that they could see the growth they made. I will share these with you at parent/teacher conferences next week. Your child will be taking the Quarter 2 pre-test this week. We will wrap up work with fractions right before Thanksgiving!

Science
We wrapped it all up this past week with a quiz, a fun movie about chemicals with Bill Nye the Science Guy, and a look at the Periodic Table. We will move into Social Studies this coming week.

We celebrated our 2nd set of 26 Soaring with Pride stickers!! The kids deserved this treat as we watched a movie in our PJs and snacked on popcorn. It was a fun time and I have pictures to share, but I left my camera at school (did I ever tell you I FOUND my camera!!) :-)

I hope you had a great weekend...I know many of you were working to finish up Science Fair Projects...breathe a sigh of relieft...you're done! I hope your child enjoyed the project...I can't wait to hear all about them!