Saturday, September 26, 2015

6th and 7th Week

Reading: Last week, we played a little catch up on all of our assignments. We also took all day Wednesday and Thursday to finish up our projects. This next week, we will finally start Stuart Little. 

Writing: We will start our first narrative this coming up week. Each day, I will model to them the steps, we will go over the steps as a class, and then the students will complete each step on their own.

Projects: We finished our very first project. I am sure your child expressed their stressful week in projects. They all worked very hard and we all learned so much! To recap on what we learned :
Research needs to be accurate and we also need to understand the research we choose so that we are able to explain it when presenting and also when we are asked questions about our presentations. All research needs to be organized, just like all writing papers. Spelling and grammar count, and fragments are easy to write, but hard to write if we can't remember our original intent. Transitions are a necessary tool to help with our fluency and our comprehension. Also, we learned that we need to use our time wisely to make sure we complete all requirements by the deadline. This requires teamwork, making sure ALL members of each group are actively working towards the end goal. We will continue to work on these instruction points throughout the year. We are already better writers and are becoming more independent in the very important steps of revising and editing. 

 We will start our new projects on Nevada maps this coming up week. 

Scholastic Book Orders: Your child will be coming home on Monday with a Scholastic Book order in their Monday folder. These orders are an easy, inexpensive way to get your child new books. If you decide to order, please send check or cash with the order slip to school with your child. I am asking that all orders be in by October 22, so that we can get all orders in on time. 


I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend :)

Saturday, September 19, 2015

Working Hard!

Reading: We have all finished our first book club books! I am really pleased with how hard the students worked to get these finished. This week, we will take a word work vocabulary quiz and finish writing our summaries from our book clubs. We will start a new book club on Wednesday. Students will be assigned new book club groups. I have done some reflecting with my book clubs and I learned a lot with this first book club. I have been working hard at making sure the next book club is more organized and I am sure the students will enjoy the next book. They are all reading Stuart Little. They will read this everyday in Daily 5 with their groups or by themselves, answer the questions and review them with their groups. 

Writing: We have continued to learn and review language standards to better help our writing skills. Next week, 5th grade will start their very first narrative. This will be a slow process, as I want to model every step to them before they do the steps to ensure they understand and know what is expected of them.

Projects: All students have been working hard at this very first project. We are going to be done with this project this week. This has been a tough project as students are learning how to take notes on a T Chart ( informal outline) and they are learning how to do their very own research. They have been transferring their work into paragraphs and have been revising and editing with their groups.

Also, thank you to everyone that donated for the auctions, they were a success! We will have these twice every quarter, so about every 4-5 weeks. If you did not get a chance to donate this week, feel free to send in items anytime as our next auction will be in a few weeks.:)

I hope everyone is having a great weekend!


Here are some pictures from PE this week courtesy of Mrs. McAllister :)









Saturday, September 12, 2015

Week 4 and 5

Reading-In Reading, we are working hard at sorting out our reading groups and will finish all of our books by Wednesday. All students have to write a short summary using Evidence Based Terms about the book they are reading. 

5th Grade Writing-I am very impressed with ALL students in Writing! They worked very hard to practice and write their first Evidence Based Term paragraphs. Next week, we will learn about similes and metaphors.This is something they will do all year for Writing and especially in Projects to help them prepare for middle school.

4th Grade Writing-We learned and practiced relative pronouns and adverbs. I am very impressed with this class as well, they are working very hard at this standard! We will take an assessment on this standard next week after all students have mastered it in IXL. We will then will learn about progressive verb tenses. 

Projects-We have been learning how to take notes on an informal outline. They have all been working hard and learning this as well. After taking notes, they are to write a paragraph using their notes and Evidence Based Terms, most students were finishing this up on Thursday. Next week, when all paragraphs are done in each group, students will start building their models or putting together their presentations. There is only one group building a model, the Native American group, they should have brought their brainstorming ideas home to go over with you this weekend. We hope to get their supply list ready by Monday.

Auctions-Auctions will be held this whole week! Please send in at least one item with your child. This can be something small, something from the Dollar Store, something your child wants to make, or something even lying around the house that no one is using. The students are very excited about these auctions. They have been all working hard at earning as many Mac Bucks as they can. :)

Saturday, September 5, 2015

Week Three and Four

   Week three flew by! In Reading, we continued with our book clubs, I hope to wrap most of those up this coming week. In both Writing classes, we wrapped up learning about the Writing Traits. In 4th Grade Writing, we started learning about Relative Pronouns and Adverbs. We will continue with this next week. In 5th Grade Writing we started learning about how to write using Evidence Based Terms. We will continue with this in the fourth week. In Projects, we learned to take informal notes. This next week, we will start writing our paragraphs, creating our timelines, and creating our presentations and models.

AUCTIONS:
As, most of you have probably heard, your child has been rewarded with MAC BUCKS for various thing in class. This is my incentive program in the classroom. During the year, I like to have Auctions about twice a quarter, so students can spend their hard earned money. The middle of the quarter is almost here! I am asking if any you are willing to donate any items for this, that would be greatly appreciated! These do not have to be big items, dollar store items, or something that is even lying around the house that no one uses anymore, please just remember no food. :)



I hope you all are having a fabulous weekend!