Dates to remember:
October 4 - Super Band Lesson to receive one on one instruction on how to play their instrument. The lesson will take place at 7:00 p.m. at Lincoln.
October 7 - Color Dash. Students should wear light colored clothing. The powder will wash out when laundered.
October 25 - Picture Day -Picture day is on Tuesday, October 25
Math:
We just finished Chapter 1 in our math book. This chapter covered a lot of review, place value, multiplication, and a little Algebra. They should be bringing their math test home tonight. I did throw one part of the test out. Some did not understand the concept, but most just did not understand the chart that they were given to find the answer. Next week, I plan to go over how the chart is set up and give them a quiz over just that part. On Monday, we will start Chapter 2, Division. They reviewed the basic skills that they needed to know to start Chapter 2 today. We introduced/reviewed a few vocabulary words, and dividing by 1 digit. I was very pleased with what they still remembered. I think that they will do great on this chapter. In math, we have also started a program to help them learn their math facts called XTRA math. It only takes a few minutes a day and it does help them to learn their facts. Many of the students have completed their pretest in Prodigy, so that I can see where we need to back up and correct math concepts and where we need to move quickly and challenge a few students. One thing that I notice every year, students really struggle with the real life measurement concepts of telling time or figuring out how many hours/minutes that it takes from the first time given to the second time given, measuring with a ruler to 1/4 inch, 1/2 inch or 3/4 inch, and problems related to money. So if you ever have that chance to give them some real life experience it will really help them.
Reading:
We also finished our book, "Fish in a Tree". We did a lot of work on character, setting, comparing one character to another, comparing settings, point of view and how things change if another character was telling the story, and also thinking about what message we were being given in this book. Next week, we will start the book, Where the Red Fern Grows. We also talked about how the Bible even has individual stories that you can talk about the characters, setting, and of course many messages and lessons being taught.
Spelling and Language:
I try each week to complete a new spelling/language lesson. Lessons include new spelling words, grammar, sentence structure, and learning about prefixes and suffixes and how they effects the meaning of words.
Writing:
In writing, we are still working on personal narratives. We read stories that are personal narratives to talk about how they are written. We have talked about the beginning of the story and how the story is introduced. Sometimes the story is introduced with an emotional lead such as our story Grandpa's Face, sometimes the story is introduced through actions, such as our story ShortCut, or it could be introduced through dialogue such as The Bee Tree, and also through a description such as In November. After listening to a short personal narrative, I challenge the students to write a new story or to edit an old story and add one of the leads that we have practiced. We will be continuing with personal narratives. All of our narratives are to be personal experiences or memories at this time. We are not writing fiction. We have related this to the Bible and how our Bible is filled with narratives and messages from God.
Science: We are back in Science class now. We have started a STEM activity. We have many STEM activities that we can use with our classes. Most of the activities are self directed with minimal help from me. I have some students building robots that can be used for coding. Students may work independently or with a group to build their projects. I have several groups working on the robot project. They are all at different stages of building. I also had a group that wanted to build a weather station. So I had one group actually complete their Stem activity of a weather station. Now that they are done building the weather station, we will do some activities to discuss precipitation, condensation, and evaporation. This morning students noticed how the water had already evaporated, and condensation was forming in the weather station.
Every week we also work with our reading buddies in preschool and first grade. With the preschool students, we do a variety of activities such as playing with them outside, art activities to help them learn how use glue and other materials. In first grade, we read with our buddies. All of the kids love reading to the first graders, and the first graders love listening to the stories. We also help clean the preschool rooms on Friday and today we helped move some material that needed to be moved to a new classroom.
I apologize. I have pictures that I want to share, but it is not allowing me to share photos this week. I will try again in a few days to see if I can send them your way.
Spelling Words:
Unit 4
1. glue
2. flute
3. .youth
4 accuse
5. bruise
6. stew
7. choose
8. loose
9. lose
10. view
11. confuse
12. cruise
13. jewel
14. execute
15. route
16. cartoon
17. avenue
18. include
19. assume
20. souvenir