Growth

Today we started, as we usually did, with journal. Our topic today was "Something funny that happened to you" and there were indeed some very amusing anecdotes that the students related. I was impressed how many of the students showed the ability to laugh at themselves. That's a great sign of maturity! We went on to discuss more about the different types of sentences. We read a short biography of Cesar Chavez in the reader and discussed how it related to the main story. The students had some great insights. 

We worked after recess on starting to understand the "Ideas" rubric for the 6+1 Traits of Writing program. These scoring guides are written in "teacher talk" so our task was to "translate" them into words the students could understand. It was not altogether easy activity, but we finally managed to gain the appropriate comprehension of phrases like "The writing seems to be writing from knowledge or experience; the ideas are fresh and original." Just before lunch, we stopped to look at the terrariums. All the groups have something growing! They measured the growth in centimeters and recorded them in their Science journals.

We took our math test after lunch. The results are on the gradebook, and I am in the process of setting up parent emails. If you have already sent me an email I will have you set up by the weekend. The students will have an opportunity to take a second version of the test when we take the Topic 2 test. They will receive the better of the two grades. After correcting the test and recording our grades, we took off for our different mixing classrooms and activities.

Then, after we returned from our afternoon mixing the students completed the gesture drawing project that they started on Tuesday. It's a fun activity for them, and most of the completed works were great!

Homework:  (1) Do “Developing Thinking Skills.” Students will probably need their Science books for this. (2) Do spelling sentences for spelling words 11-20. (3) Do “Addition with Regrouping 4.” The skill will be tested tomorrow. (4) Do the spelling wordsearch.

Again, if the summary of “My Diary:  From Here to There” was not turned in yesterday, it should be done tonight.