Spelling: We're working on homophones, learning the difference between words such as sax and sacks, flex and flecks, etc. It's been fun!
Health: This year the school purchased a series called, The Great Body Shop and we used the materials this week to study the central nervous system. It was a very informative and exciting unit of study! The children learned a good deal of information, did hands-on projects, lots of brainstorming and even some physical experiments. If you're interested you should ask your child to take home his/her science journal and chat with you about things that we learned. We even got into a discussion about brain hemispheres and took a little quiz to see which side of the brain each of us uses most readily. We then made a list of ways that right-brained students can use those skills to help them be more successful in left-brained classrooms. You'd have been really excited if you could have heard their ideas! They're pretty impressive people.
Grammar: Possessive nouns, both singular and plural, are the target skill this week.
Reading: In preparation for Friday's field trip to see the play,
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere, we read the play and studied its language as well as the poet's style and mood setting skills. On Thursday, the children all took roles in the play and acted it out. They were truly marvelous! I defy the college production to meet their level of creativity and enthusiasm!
They inspired me to provide more opportunities for them to pursue the use of drama in their studies.
We're still practicing using schema and inferring when we read. However, we've also started working on the comprehension strategy that is called determining importance. To do this we started off using the Time for Kids newsletters so that the children could highlight important points. We will continue to practice taking notes in an organized way and then putting their notes into a short essay the next day.
I'm still expecting the children to read each evening. They should be covering at least 30 pages by this point in the year.
We'll be starting the comprehension skill of asking questions next week.
Also, the children will be practicing writing How-To essays. I know, it's not the most exciting writing genre, but one that's expected of them in the Scott Foresman ELA series. So far we've begun a nice list of time ordering words. We've been trying to take note of them when we read them in books as well to add to the student generated list.
Facts Update: All of the multiplication facts are now included in the peer tutoring bags and most of the children are showing mastery of them. We're starting to take the 100 facts (in 3 minutes) tests so they can establish a 100 Club, hoping to encourage all of the children in the skill of gaining speed of fact recall. Those who reach the 100 Club generally practice the facts as division rather than multiplication to further challenge them.
Math: We've started unit 5 in math and are due to finish it before we break for Christmas. There have been many unusual schedule interruptions lately so there may be days coming up in which we double up a bit in math in order to keep pace and be able to finish all of the math material by June. Your parent newsletters and answer keys will go home on Friday, December 4th.
Everyday Math Games: The children have been given their passwords and some practice with the online Everyday Math games during computer class. You are strongly urged to check them out online at home and encourage your child to play them. The link is located on the school's webpage.
New Appointment Partners: We've also changed our "appointment books" so that the children have new working partners. It helps keep things interesting when they work cooperatively.
Fabulous Friday is a new incentive program I'm starting for the children on Monday. Your child should be able to tell you how they earn points and what their reward will be for reaching their goal. They're excited about the proposed plan and I'm excited about keeping us all focused through this very hectic month. I'm certain that Santa will be very proud of all of us!
