Sept. 11, Another good week!
I have begun to enter grades in gradespeed. A link to the left of this note will allow you to see your child's grades.
Important note: My grading is done in excel, which allows me to record a "redo" instead of a low grade. Gradespeed does not give that option. I will begin to record an incomplete for assignments that have a low score. My goal is for your children to get good grades. The incomplete means that they have been given back the assignment and they can redo it for a higher grade. Sometimes that will be done in small groups in the classroom, so the concepts can be retaught. Other times, they may have hurried and not done their best, so they will have a chance to redo it on their own.
We started checking books out of the library. Students man also use books from our classroom library. We made a list of the best books that we have read and we will add to it as the year goes by. We started word study, also known as spelling. Research shows that spelling should be based upon sorting words by patterns that we see in them, so we will continue to practice not only writing our spelling words, but also looking for the patterns in them.
In science, we are studing the weather. We saw water vapor form water droplets around salt crystals. Students could tell that it had something to do with the water cycle, but they predicted it was about evaporation. When they used a handlens, they could still see the salt crystal in the droplet, so they concluded that they what they were really seeing was condensation. Aha, now we know how clouds are actually formed and we know that it takes millions of the water droplets to make a cloud.
In math we continued to study rounding and subtraction regrouping. The 4 steps for rounding are:
1. Underline the digit that is in the place you need to round to.
2. Look to the right of the underlined digit, if that digit is 5 or more then you increase the underlined digit by 1; if the digit is less than 5, the underlined digit stays the same.
3. All numbers after the underlined digit are changed to zeros
4. Be sure that your new number has the same number of digits as the number that you started with.
Sept. 4, Our second week went well.
We learned about warm air and cold air, climate and the weather. Ask your child what the difference is between the two. We also observed how the sun heats different surfaces up by taking the temperature of the playground blacktop, grass in the sun and in the shade, and gravel. With our balloon on the top of a bottle experiment we saw how warm air rises (when we put the bottle in warm water it blew the balloon up) and cold air goes down (the balloon was pulled into the bottle when we put the bottle in a bowl of ice.)
In math, we studied place value and estimating (or rounding). Write down a few 2 digit to 6 digit numbers and have your child show you how he or she can put them in order from smallest to highest.
We finished the 1st half of the book Maniac Magee and we are looking forward to meeting a new character in the book when we return next week. The text-to-self homework was turned in and next week we will move on to text-to-text. (which means we will make connections between what we read in books, magazines, and newspapers) We will practice on Tuesday before they bring home their homework.
Have a safe and happy Labor Day weekend!
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Aug. 28, We had a great first week!
Your child should be able to tell you what a scientist looks like and what scientists do, as well as, how the sun is helpful and how it is harmful. He or she also learned about the UV index (the need for sunscreen) and what happens to the air when the sun or (any energy source) heats it up.
In class, we are reading "Maniac Magee" by Jerry Spinelli.
We also completed a "Text-to-Self" sample of the homework form that we will complete for homework each day, Monday -Thursday, starting next week. While or after your child reads for 20 minutes each evening, he or she needs to copy a sentence from the book into the top square that reminds him or her of something from their life, and then make one complete sentence about that in the bottom square.
In math, we discovered ways to make the same number with blocks, dice or ten base rods. We also reviewed place value.