SORRY!!!

Oh my...I had a CRAZY weekend...full of basketball games, baseball games, and a dance competition...to say I was never home is an understatement. So...I never got to blog...my apologies...I hope to make up for it now. Last week we had a wonderful week and we accomplished so much... Language Arts So...where to begin...we are continuing our book clubs using 21 Balloons. The kids are doing great work acting as clarifiers, questioners, predictors, and picture painters...the discussions are rich. I keep telling the kids that they will only get what they want from the discussion...many are very interested to hear others' perspectives and chime in with their own thoughts...it is very fun to listen to! Last week the kids gathered information about paleontologists. This week they wrote a paragraph explaining whether or not they'd like to be a paleontologist. I shared the writing rubric with them ahead of time and they worked hard to produce excellent writing. I'm still grading these, but they will come home sometime late this week. I am so pleased at the work your kids are producing in Writer's Workshop. This is another place that you only get out of it, what you want to get out of it. It is free choice writing, with lessons built in to teach about the writing traits and other important areas of writing. I see SO many kids incorporating what they're learning into their work! I have a few that have a hard time with using the time wisely, but overall, most kids do a fantastic job!! As you know we went to see "Cinderella" last week...what fun! It is amazing to me that it was a high school production...such outstanding acting and musicians...we had a wonderful time! Math We had a lot of fun in math this week. We worked with the "correct" way to count back change. You would be surprised how hard this is for some kids. They can "do the math" so quickly in their heads that they don't really know exactly which coins to hand back and how...so we practiced...and practiced...and practiced. The trick is to teach the kids to count back to the "quarter mark" first and then to the dollar mark, the five dollar mark, and the ten dollar markusing the least amount of coins and bills. For instance, if you hand someone a 20 dollar bill and are paying for something that is $1.37. You would first give the person 3 pennies and say, "one dollar, 40 cents." Then hand them a dime and say, "one dollar, 50 cents (the quarter mark)". Then two quarters and say, "two dollars." Then three dollars and say, "five dollars" and then a five and a ten. Once most of the class got this concept they flew with it. A few had a hard time and could still use some practice!! The kids designed stores and we spent two days shopping from each others' stores and selling...each student was responsible for writing a word problem to go with their store and then I made that into a worksheet so the kids could solve each others' problems. Overall, the kids really enjoyed math last week! Science Well...we are headed into our Populations unit while we finish up the Rock, Soil, and Fossils unit. We already have a living organism in our classroom that we will begin studying tomorrow...daphnia...ever heard of them? They are tiny organisms that you find in ponds. On Wednesday we will get our anoles...and our terrariums are finally looking like habitats! More to come on this Friday! GEMS project.... Yes, your kids were assigned a project last week...it is the way we're sending off the Rock, Soil, and Fossils unit. After they choose a gem, the kids need to research and organize the information; then they need to decide how they want to present the information. They have total control over this decision other than the fact that they need to make sure the important information about the gem is included! Tomorrow I will be sending something home on which the kids can record their resources. I am working very hard to help the kids NOT plagiarize, and most of them really understand how to write it in their own words...however, if I question whether or not it's their words, I need to be able to refer to something. Thank you for helping your child not copy sentences from books. Have them record key words and turn them into their own sentences. I look forward to seeing their finished products!