The good news is, your kids don't get lost in the shuffle...they're a HUGE part of my daily juggle and I wouldn't have it any other way! We've been having a grand old time and I have SOOOO many pictures to share with you!!
In Language Arts we have been working on reading literature with short stories...we used the Junior Great Books program that is published particularly for advanced learners...the kids are required to delve deep into excellent literature and learn to defend ideas and argue respectfully with others' ideas using evidence in their arguments. It is a strategy called "Shared Inquiry" and we ask and answer tough questions about the texts. As a teacher, it was SO much fun. I love hearing their different points of view and then posing questions to make them question themselves. SO many of them are very confident learners and have no problem giving it right back! (using evidence of course!) Reading literature has been our focus for the last three weeks, but now we will head back into reading for information...continuing to work on main idea and details of difficult pieces of text...doing close reading for text evidence to support our thoughts, etc.
This ties nicely with our writing for quarter two. As you are aware, your child finished their first published piece...the narrative. This week, the kids took a pre-writing assessment where they were able to bring an article or book from home about a topic they are interested in...they then had 40 minutes to plan, draft, edit and revise an informational piece showing everything they know about this type of writing. We will spend the next quarter building our toolkit for this kind of writing, so that they have a better understanding of all that is involved and needed to write an informative piece.
In Math we are heavy into multiplication and division and we are all over the place...some kids have mastered the algorithm and their facts...they are focusing solely on solving multi-step word problems. Some kids are working to represent multiplication and division using manipulatives, drawings, etc...they are making sense of the concepts, while others are working on the algorithm because they've mastered the concepts...and EVERYONE is working on solving word problems and SHOULD be working on mastering their basic facts!!
I will be sharing with you their updated fact scores at conferences so that you have an idea if they are improving...this will help us determine how much more they need to be practicing...these facts need to be memorized...this is something I expect the kids to do at home...and their mastery will help them SOOOO much as we head towards long division!!
Our Science unit "Aquariums" has been a lot of fun...we're headed into the home stretch...discussing food chains and webs...producers, consumers, decomposers, carnivores, herbivores, omnivores, prey, predators...we have studied many particular organisms...especially daphnia, snails, fiddler crabs, and newts...they kids have made predictions and verified those predictions, they have done lots of observing, and have drawn some conclusions along the way. We will be having a science test in a couple weeks. No worries, a study guide will come home and they will have a week to prepare.
