Anyway...I barely had time to teach, much less anything else...so between that and the holidays wrapping up, my own children..and of course YOURS...the blog has fallen low on the priority list.
But...I'M BACK!
I honestly don't even know where to start, so I think I will just give you last week's run down and we'll go from there...
Language Arts
We are hot and heavy into our Cinderella Unit...when I first told the kids about this unit, we had quite a few eye rollers...mainly from boys, but from some girls, too...I promised them that they would feel differently by the time we were hot and heavy into the unit...I WAS RIGHT! (heehee...I love saying that!) We have about 25 different versions of Cinderella in the room and at any point they are all being read...the kids CANNOT GET ENOUGH!! What haven't we done with the fairy tales?! We have dissected story elements, we have discussed how both culture and theme influence an author when retelling the tale and now the kids are seriously professionals at determining which influence affected which author. It is SO fun to be in my classroom during these discussions. We have read tales independently and answered close reading questions, and we have read tales in pairs and then used a venn diagram to compare and contrast the tales. Just this past Friday we read the tale as told from Cinderella's perspective and now tomorrow we will be reading it from Lady Tremaine's (mean step mother) perspective...and then discussing how different the tale is when the perspective changes. And we're not finished!! We will be reading the Chinese version written as a play and discussing how that writing style affects the tale...and then to culminate, the kids will WRITE their own Ella tale. They may use a cultural influence or a thematic influence...they may use magic or not, they may use a female main character or a male "Ella"...we've read them all! Want to get your kid talking about it? Ask him/her which "Ella" tale is their favorite and why? They will use vocabulary like "proof of identity" (what the Ella character leaves behind for the "prince" character) or magical help (could be a fairy godmother, could be a fairy COW)! More to come with Cinderella....
Writing
Before we start the "Ella" tales we must finish our Narrative Essays about Winter Break. The kids used their computer lab time the week after Winter Break to write about three or four events that occurred during Winter Break. They made a bulleted list and typed details about those events. We then printed those prewriting events and details and used them to compose rough drafts. We discussed the purpose of topic paragraphs...how to grab a reader's attention, how to use transition words to connect the paragraphs, and how to sum up the essay and write a concluding paragraph. They will be using an editing checklist tomorrow, doing some revision, and then writing final paragraphs later this week.
Math
FRACTIONS, FRACTIONS, FRACTIONS...really sums up math these past two weeks...fraction number lines, problem solving with fractions, equivalent fractions, mixed numbers and improper fractions, adding fractions with like denominators, comparing fractions using <, >, and =...as you can see...we've been busy. We will continue with fractions this coming week...because really? Can you ever get enough fractions?! ;-)
Social Studies
As a final culmination, the kids took an Economics test on Tuesday of this past week...this was not one the kids needed to study for as it really covered all vocabulary and concepts we had been using during our month long Entrepreneur unit. However, a few kids struggled with the test. If your child was one of those that struggled and you'd like him/her to have a make up test to help improve their score, please send the test back with a parent signature...I'd be happy to have them take a second test and average the two scores.
STEM
We recently participated in a school wide STEM challenge...who could build the tallest tower using spaghetti and small marshmallows. The kids were in groups of three and four kids, and did some thinking, planning, and executing in order to meet this challenge...the kids found out that no matter what your plan is, you almost always have to abandon it, make some changes, and try again. It was a fantastic exercise and I have pictures of the planning stages, but I downloaded the final pix to the computer at school, so I can't post those until tomorrow. Stay tuned...they were pretty awesome...well, some of them! ;-)
Who knows what Mother Nature has in store for us tomorrow...but whatever it is...stay warm!
