Our First Rainy Day

Well, there's nothing teachers hate so much as rainy day schedule, but we had a pleasant day today despite the deluge!

Our reading conferences are really going quite well, and I'm impressed by how much many of the students are reading. We also sloshed our way over to the library where students picked out more books for their free reading. Our student librarians have distinguished themselves by their quick grasp of the new library automation system.

Back in the room, we reviewed the Teammates story and discussed finding main ideas and details in a text. We paid particular attention to how the main idea is usually found in a topic sentence and supporting details fill up the rest of the paragraph.

After an in-class recess, students worked in partners to construct a model of a food chain. An example of one of these marvelous models is shown in the picture above. We discussed who were producers and who were consumers in the chain. The students then worked with their partner to create an expository paragraph with the main idea stated in the topic sentence and supporting ideas, drawn from the models they had made, in the rest of the paragraph.

After lunch, the students did a wonderful job cleaning up the room and we had math time. We talked about when you have to use addition to solve a problem and when you get to use multiplication. About half of our students are already finished with the first Number Sense 2.2 page and have moved on to the second one. Great work!

Homework: Continue to study spelling for Friday's test. Complete the Parts of a
Book worksheet. Complete either "Folktales" or "Tell a Tale",
whichever one you received. Complete at least through the Chapter
Review, page 128. If possible, finish the first multiplication page
(NS 2.2A).