A quick week...a quick post!

I hope you all have enjoyed the Fall Festival slide show and the wonderful commercials your kids produced (the two posts prior to this one)! I guess it just took a really long time for all of the commercials to download, so it wasn't a catastrophe after all...thank goodness!

We've only had three days, so I'll see if I can sum it up in three minutes...

In Math we are working with fractions. We will be exploring equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions, and working with mixed numbers and improper fractions. It is a fun unit and I'm so fortunate this group LOVES math...well, most of them! The others I'm still working on!! Today the kids took their Quarter 1 post test, and I'm excited to see the results when compared with the pretest they took at the beginning of the year. I use these post tests, along with other measures to guide my instruction.

In Language Arts we read a wonderful story called "The Master Cat" by Charles Perrault this week. This story comes from the Junior Greatbooks program. The students have been working with and analyzing this story and will be using their knowledge to participate in a Shared Inquiry Discussion next week...sort of like a discussion/debate where the kids use the information in the text to support their thinking...this group is going to LOVE it!!

Today the kids used their observations and data collection to identify the five mystery powders!! They were given clues and they had to match their data to the clues, in order to solve the mystery. This science unit has been loads of fun and I know the kids will be sorry to be finished. We will be doing a culminating activity for this science unit at the beginning of next week, and then we will head back into Social Studies.

As I type, your students are working in the computer lab to publish their "Ella" stories...they are not all master keyboarders, so we will use a couple different lab times to complete this task. I am anxious to share these stories with you at parent teacher conferences!

Speaking of Parent/Teacher Conferences...today your child is brining home the conference date and time that either you signed up for, or that you were assigned. Attached to the conference slip is a red sheet that I would appreciate if you would return when you return the conference slip. It will allow you to give me information or questions that you would like addressed, so I can best plan for the conference. I appreciate you taking the time to do this!

REMINDER: Early bird due date for the Science Fair project is one week from today! I look forward to seeing the work your kids have been doing!!

I hope you all have a great weekend!