Looking at Minerals

The weekend went by pretty fast, didn’t it? But it’s nice to be back together again, too.

We started off discussing the math homework from last Friday. The students seem to have a pretty good grasp of fractions for the first chapter. They’ll be tested on it tomorrow. We also went over the Cricket in Times Square quiz and the spelling test from last week. The results – generally quite good – are on the gradebook.

This week we are going to be taking the Literacy Periodic Assessment. So, we will be doing a number of things to help focus on some of these key tested skills. One of those is the ability to distinguish among simile, metaphor, hyperbole, and personification. Our students first practiced writing and sharing examples of these today. They will be writing a story this week that will include examples of all of these. They started on the rough draft today. We’ll be refining it and doing second and final drafts later in the week.

In Science, we are starting work on minerals. Our students examined four mystery minerals today. They looked for properties such as color, opacity, and texture. They will be learning later in the week about the scratch test and the Mohs hardness scale to make a final determination of which minerals are which.

After lunch, we continued listening to James and the Giant Peach. We also evaluated a couple of paragraphs against a rubric for the trait of Word Choice. We are finishing topic 9 in math today.

Homework:  (1) Write spelling words 1-5 five times each in cursive. Write one sentence for each word, also in cursive. (2) Do “Remembering Details” study sheet. (3) Do “Classifying Words” worksheet. (4) Do “Finding Synonyms” worksheet. (4) Do “Problem Solving,” pages 243-244 and “Test Prep” on pages 247-248. (6) Do Comparing Fractions 1 worksheet.

Also, be sure that the rough draft of the story is finished for tomorrow.