Class News for the week of 9/2/08

Even tho it was a short week, we were still able to fit in lots of fun and learning!

Read and Write 4 Today: Throughout the week, we read Cherry Blossom festival. It was interesting to learn about celebrations in other countries. On Friday, we read about the Midsummer Magic Festival in Norway. The students took a reading test that assessed their comprehension of the passage. They did very well! I am impressed! We also wrote a paragraph about our favorite food. The students planned their writing, did a pre-write, and edited their writing throughout the week. On Friday, they wrote their final draft. They were expected to have a topic sentence, 4-6 supporting sentences, and a concluding sentence. This was easy for most of the class because we have been working super hard on it for a couple of weeks!

Writing: On Tuesday we wrote a bio poem. The students used prompts to write a poem about themselves. We are going to edit them and then they will type them in the computer lab. I am planning on displaying them in the classroom!

Reading: We read The Mighty Saguaro all week. Students learned new vocabulary. They even learned new information about the desert! They were surprised that there was anything that they didn't already know! They also answered comprehension questions about each chapter. We worked real hard on writing in COMPLETE SENTENCES that included a capital letter at the beginning, punctuation at the end, and part of the question! We are getting better at this!

Spelling: New words came home on Thursday. The test will be on Wednesday Sept. 10th. Every student in the class has their own list. The list consists of any words they missed on last week's test, words they missed from the pretest of words they need to know by the end of third grade, and words that I have taken out of their writing that they have misspelled. It is important that the word lists are not removed from the planners. I do not keep a copy at school. Feel free to make yourself a copy for home if you would like! Don't forget to visit Spelling City. The link is on the right side of our blog page. Type your spelling words into this site and play games with them!

Math: We finished chapter 1 this week and the students took a the end of the chapter assessment on Friday. Everyone did awesome! They also were given a self reflection to complete AND... they were asked to try and complete a written response question. This question was a challenge but CONGRATS!!!! to Taylor and Aaron for solving the problem. Great job you two! Here is the problem in case anyone wants to try it at home:

Imad collects quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. This morning, he took $1.80 from his collection. He counted the coins and found that he had twice as many nickels as dimes. What coins could Imad have?

Science: The Circle of Life! We have been learning about the life cycle of two plants, one the cactus and two the bean. Next week we will look more in depth into the bean plants life.

Don't forget to check your grades online! I will update them on Tuesday.

This year is off to such a great start and I am really enjoying this group of kiddos. They are such hard workers and we are having a lot of fun together. Thanks for all of your support at home!

In your child's homework folders is a note with the day and time of teacher conferences. Conferences are the week of September 22. September 23-26 are 1/2 days which means all of those days will be like Tuesdays schedule.

Have a wonderful rest of the weekend and please drop me an email if you have any questions.

Also, if you get a chance please leave a comment on the blog about how I could improve this blog or if you find it useful. Thanks!