Bracing!

This was a pretty routine Tuesday.  We began with working on the Word Knowledge and Vocabulary for our next story, “Mae Jemison: Space Scientist.” Students do not really like spending time talking about prefixes, suffixes, and root words, but they are so important for developing vocabularies I persevere no matter how bored they get. I also based our spelling list on this so we can come back and continue discussing it through the week.

We corrected our math test, and the results will be on the gradebook soon. Many of the scores were good, but a few students were disappointed by the results. We' will be continuing to review the areas I identify as the weakest. We talked about the Brace Map after this. The Brace Map is used to discuss whole and parts. Here is an example of a Brace Map swiped from the ever-helpful Google Images.

The students are suppose to create a paragraph and write a paragraph or two on the topic “My Best Outfit.” I usually find that a lot of boys in particular hate this idea so I let them substitute “My Favorite Meal” as an alternative. They will be finishing this for homework tonight.

After lunch we read the first chapter of Island of the Blue Dolphins. We’ll be reading this as a literature connection to our study of California native peoples. We discussed half, quarter, and eighth notes in Music, and students started to perform their “Marco Polo” body percussion. We’re starting the Multiplication Unit in math, so we briefly reviewed some key vocabulary like factor, product, and array.

Homework:  (1) Write the spelling words in syllables. For example, antibiotics would be an-ti-bi-ot-ics. This is designed to help the students realize that long, complex words are really generally just a sequence of pretty easy syllables. (2) Do the Brace Map and the rough draft as described above. Be sure to skip lines on the rough draft. (3) Do “Meanings of Multiplication,” Envision Math pages 57-59.