Rocks on our Minds

Today was a strange kind of early September day. It looked like it was going to be yet another blazingly hot day in the early morning, and then all of a sudden it became cool and humid and cloudy. It was even sprinkling at the beginning of recess. The students were all hoping for rainy day schedule; the teachers were all praying for a regular recess. And we teachers had our wishes granted for a change!

We worked for a bit on descriptive writing this morning and we also worked on the difference between the simple and complete predicate in a sentence. We checked and corrected our math homework. We read a short informational article called “Kid Reporters” in the Treasures book. The third story in each unit is taken from back issues of Time for Kids. This story was about two young reporters from the magazine. One went to the UN Special Session on Children, while the  other interviewed a talented young boy who had started a charity for children in the Third World. This helped us work on our skills of comparing and contrasting as well as drawing out inferences. We worked some more on our Thinking maps. We worked on the Brace Map today.

The students wrote about their favorite meal and they broke down the foods into different component parts, e.g., pizza as flour/water, tomato/onion/spices, and mozzarella cheese.

After recess, we started our second part of our rocks and minerals unit. Here the students were examining four different mystery minerals.

They focused today on just the visible properties.

Tomorrow they will be looking at hardness and the scratch test. This will lead up to learning to use the Mohs Hardness Scale.

In math we worked a bit more on subtraction.

Homework:  (1) Study the spelling words. (2) Do the S and T cursive worksheets. (3) Do “Library,” page 38, “Writing,” page 39, and “Antonyms,” page 40 in the Practice Book. (4) Complete the rough and final drafts of “My Favorite Meal.” (5) Do the “Mining for Minerals” study sheet. Students had ample time to work on this after lunch. (6) Do “Zeroes,” pages 42-43  in the math book and “Transportation Conclusions” on the back of the answer sheet.