Week of May 14th, 2012

Happy Friday!

As always...

Reminder: I am hoping to attend some of the students' extra curricular functions.  Feel free to send me any dates or schedules for anything your student may be participating in before the end of the school year!

Literacy

Writing: 

This week we got our Poetry pages printed off and are finishing putting together our books!  We are also continuing to work on our creative choice pieces. Some students are creating research-based alphabet books, while others are writing picture and chapter books!  We continue to be impressed with their talent and creativeness.  

Reading: 

This week we finished discussing our animal fantasy novels!  Students did a fantastic job making connections to their lives as well as creating vivid mental images and then documenting them.  We are also winding down on our weekly assignments with the end of the year approaching.  Students are still expected to read each week from their independent reading books; however they no longer need to fill out an IRJ log or entry.  They should simply record any of the books they read on the front page.

Word Study:

This is our final week doing word study due to our field trip next Friday and then the end of the year approaching.  Thanks for all of the hard work during the semester.  Our vocabulary is certainly richer because of it!

Math:

During math we started the week by learning about how to find the volume of an object.  We worked with food and game boxes to either measure the dimensions using a ruler or filled the space (or the dimensions) with one-inch cubes.  We also worked on finding the volume of triangular prisms.  We also have been doing our problem solving fourth quarter assessments.  Students are working VERY hard and we are confident they will be fantastic!

Social Studies:

We continued down the Hacker trail by learning of some of our fates and writing another diary entry about the heavy rains that created impassable trails.  Some of our wagon trains got delayed because of the rain!

Science:

This week I taught a lesson on saturation and finding out what a mystery substance is by saturating it and then measuring it on a scale.  This was a really fun lesson and we even got to do some movement while saturating (doing the "saturation" dance).

Extra:

This week we got the privilege of attending the Strings and Marimba Concert!  Nina, Aidan, Michelle, Kayla, and Kiki did a FANTASTIC job!  We are all very proud of them!

Have a FANTASTIC week!