0 Comments
This morning some field trip money went missing from my desk. My first reaction was that it could not have possibly been a student from our class and that someone must have wondered into our room and found the money too tempting to resist. However upon further investigation I have found this thievery to be an internal matter. When we went down to Mrs. Owen's room for snack this morning I left money paperclipped inside a student's permission slip. When we returned from snack I noticed that the money was missing. Throughout the morning a student found money on the back counter a few dollars at a time. What is interesting is that the money was found by the same student each time. As I'm writing this to you we are still missing $5. I am hoping that the student responsible will come forward and return the money by the end of the day. I am saddened that a student in our class would consider stealing from their peers. We had a class discussion today about honesty and trust. Please help me reinforce this by having your own discussion with your children tonight. I will be notifying the parents of the child that I suspect might be involved. Thanks for your support, ~Mrs. D P.S - Don't forget that permission slips for our field trip next week are due by Friday. When in doubt tell the truth - Mark Twain I hope you all have a restful weekend with your children and loved ones. Today our class finished making their Mother's Day gifts for you. Your child can't wait to give it to you and is very proud their work! Warmer weather is finally upon us! Our morning still start off chilly and as the afternoons start to warm up please make sure your child is dressed appropriately. In literacy this week we worked on drawing conclusions from facts in the text. We read an autobiography about an author in our Treasures text and worked on identifying adjectives within the story. Students were introduced to a new literary element this week: onomatopoeia (the use of a word, such as buzz or swoosh, that sounds like the object or action it refers to). They had fun writing sentences with onomatopoeia. In math we are finishing up our unit on geometry and fractions. This week we focused on dividing or partitioning circles into halves, thirds, and fourths. Students became bakers as we completed an activity where we created "Fraction cookies". Students were required to draw cookies when given fractional topping amounts. Next week we will be having our end-of-unit test on 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes and fractions. Today was an exciting day! We visited Mrs. Brown's eighth grade science class to complete a worm lab with eighth grade buddies! Our students were hands-on with earthworms as they made observations about their behavior. (Don't worry, no earthworms were hurt during our observations and they were promptly released into the wild when we were finished.) Our classroom library has been re-opened for almost two weeks now and I am pleased to report that the students are being very respectful of the books! Weekly reflections went home today. This will be our last weekly reflection for the year. The next few weeks are going to go by fast and it's going to be a whirlwind of review activities and end of the year assessments (DRA testing will be next Friday, May 17th). If you have any questions or concerns about your child's progress or behavior please do not hesitate to contact me! Happy Mother's day and have a great weekend! ~Mrs. D :-) Over vacation I synced my iPad and found a bunch of classroom pictures that have not been posted yet. Enjoy :-) Today we introduced a new contraction center that was perfect for our rainy afternoon! We also created "chocolate bar" book reports for The Chocolate Touch, by Patrick Skene Catling. Students worked on writing summaries and the problem/solution relationship. We have been working with shapes in math and today students became "Shape Detectives" to identify 3-D shapes in the real world. Thank you all for coming in for conferences this week. If you still have any questions or concerns regarding your child's progress please don't hesitate to contact me. We will be continuing to work with The Chocolate Touch when we return from break. For a preview of what's to come, check out this cool video from the Hershey Factory in Pennsylvania! Have a great spring vacation! ~Mrs. D Check your child's backpack for report cards! Please put any comments or questions you may have about your child's progress on the "Conference Questionnaire" sheet that went home yesterday. This will help me to better prepare for conferences next week so we can make the most of our 15 minute time slot.
In literacy this week we read about explorer Christopher Columbus, were introduced to world maps showing countries and continents, and read about what it would be like to climb Mt. Everest! It was a very exciting week! Our focus was once again on main idea and supporting details and students are making progress with this topic. We continued to work with pronouns and contractions in grammar. Continuing our theme of exploration, students made caves this week and wrote about what it would be like to explore one. Next week we will be reading a non-fiction selection and discussing story structure. In math we continued to explore the world of 2-dimensional shapes. We worked on classifying shapes based on their attributes and students were introduced to several new vocabulary words (vertex, angle, quadrilateral...) which are displayed on one of our classroom bulletin boards. We will continue to work with shapes next week and introduce 3-dimentional figures. Reminders/Announcements:
Have a great weekend! ~Mrs. D * I am a little behond on posting classroom pictures... It has been an uphill battle this week getting students to slow down and take time with their assignments but I am starting to see an improvement. The class is starting to realize that even though the hare may have finished his work first, the careful tortoise still winds up winning in the end. We did not have time to have our "Careful Workers Club" this afternoon but I have still been saving careless work to be made up next week! In math this week we began working with 2-dimensional shapes. Today we identified shapes based on the number of sides and reviewed shape names. Next week we will be building shape robots, exploring 3-dimensional shapes, and learning new math vocabulary words such as vertices, angles, edges, and faces! This week in literacy we continued to discuss author's purpose, explored the problem/solution relationship, and worked on writing narratives with dialogue. We read about the Sonoran Desert and a Native American play from the Snohomish people called "Pushing up the Sky". Next week we will be reading about exploration and focusing on the text features in nonfiction articles. As always we will continue to discuss main idea and details. We will also be expanding our grammar with possessive pronouns next week. We were working so hard on our writing prompts this afternoon that time got away from us and we forgot our spelling test! We will take our spelling test on Monday so take the extra time to study your words. Reminders:
Have a great weekend! ~Mrs. D The best words to describe our week are SLOW DOWN! Students have been rushing through their work causing them to make careless mistakes. They are not paying attention to directions on assignments, therefore getting the whole assignment wrong and having to complete it again! Today we started the "Careful Workers Club" which will take place every friday afternoon. As the week progressed I placed student's work in a folder if they had rushed through it and made mistakes. Today those students sat and corrected/made up their work while other more "careful" students were able to participate in a craft activity. Im hoping that this will provide students with incentive to slow down and get it right the first time. They are certainly capable of doing it! Out literacy theme this week is taking us longer to get through than anticipated, so we will be carrying it over into next week. Students have been working on determining the author's purpose while reading texts with a desert theme. Yesterday we read about the lifecycle of the spadefoot toad! In grammar we have been working with pronouns and today the class participated in a St. Patrick's day pronoun scavenger hunt. We took our unit 4 literacy test this week and students did well. They will be coming home next week. We are finishing up our math unit on money. Students played a money match game and cut up shopping flyers as they pretended to grocery shop with $5. We also read "Alexander who Used to be Rich Last Sunday" and students kept a running total of Alexander's money. Next week we will take our unit test. Please practice counting change with your child every night. Just an extra 5 minutes a night can make a HUGE difference! The next unit we will begin will be on shapes.
Enjoy the nice weather and have a great weekend! ~Mrs. D P.S. - I have some pictures from the last two weeks that I will upload sometime this weekend. Stay tuned :-) I am sad to report that our classroom library will be closed until further notice. Our students have not been respecting the books and several are without covers, are torn, and are missing pages. Starting tomorrow students will be required to bring in books to read during silent reading time. It is their responsibility to remember their books and if they forget they will need to move their clip. I am hoping that through this process students will learn responsibility and respect for classroom property. Thanks in advance for your support! ~ Mrs. D |
AuthorMrs. Dempsey Archives
May 2013
Categories |