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 Happy Read Across America Day! On March 2nd we celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday by spending some extra time reading. Since this day does not fall during the school week this year I'm encouraging students to take some time out of their day tomorrow to snuggle up with a good book! We began our Seuss celebration (a Seuss-abration, lol) today by making "Cat in the Hat" hats with our rhyming spelling words written on the stripes. On Monday we will continue to celebrate all things Seuss while sporting our fine new hats. Students are encouraged to bring in any Seuss stuffed animals they have at home (or any favorite stuffed animal) to be their reading buddies on Monday. In math this week we continued working with money and making change. Students participated in a coin game where they needed to continuously make change to have a few coins as possible. Next week the class will be taking a mid-unit assessment to see how they are progressing. Please practice identifying coins with your children at home. As you empty your pockets or purse each night ask your child to count your change for you. This simple activity will greatly benefit your child and provide you with some great 1-on-1 time! In literacy this week we introduced some new Common Core "I can" statements as we began working on determining the main ideas of multiple-paragraph texts. This task proved difficult for most of the class and is something that we will continue working on next week. A complete list of this week's "I can" statements can be downloaded below.
Our week in Pictures:Don't forget you can visit these great sites at home 24/7:
P.S - The afternoon ran away on us today and after the busses left I noticed that our weekly reflections are still on my desk! Oops :-) Check for them in your child's folder on Monday. |
AuthorMrs. Dempsey Archives
May 2013
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