WEEK OF JANUARY 14-18

First of all, I am sorry I didn't post anything last week- I really don't have a good reason, except that time got away from me which isn't a reason at all! 


Spelling Bee:  Rayah Blood won and Evan Eding was runner up. Congratulations to them! Kyle Heyerman, Brendan Nyboer, and Seth Hartz also participated from our class and did well! I am very proud of them!

Assembly: You may have seen information about our writing assembly in the paper or on the news. "Think it Up and Write it Down!" was the theme. All students will have the opportunity to write a story and submit it to teachers. 10 stories will be chosen from 3rd-5th and sent in to the group from Detroit. They will choose some stories and perform these when they come back in March while students whose stories were chosen sit in the author's chair.

 

Spelling: The skill this week was diagraphs- ch, wh, ph, th, sh. We took lesson 15 test on Friday. Tests will be sent home on Monday. List 16 was sent home earlier this week.


Math: Fractions, fractions, fractions! We are involved in the first of 2 fraction units right now. We are also working during RTI with fractions. I have placed a folder for fractions on my fusion page. It has very good tutorials for review and activities attached.  I will continue to add to this. Click on "Fractions" and choose your topic. We have covered comparing fractions, simplifying fractions, converting mixed numbers to improper fractions, greatest common factors, and equivalent fractions. We will continue to review these and will move into converting decimals to fractions next week.

TEST: We don't give the test for this unit until we are already into the next unit -fraction operations. The concepts from this unit are used repeatedly in the next, so kids get more practice.

READING: We have been reading various nonfiction texts the past 2 weeks. Learning the text structures of these texts is an important skill. We have worked on problem solution, cause and effect, vocabulary, how to read for information and connect what we read in a "deep" way where we gain more insight into the text, not a "flat" way.   We will begin reading realistic fiction and work in Book Club groups. 

WRITING:   We have been discussing various sentence structures and had some fun practicing those orally. We reviewed onomatopeoia -sound words. Students are have a couple of options for writing a short story that includes these skills. 

SCIENCE:  We are involved in our Forces and Motion unit which allows for a lot of hands on activities and movement. We are connecting lessons to how they affect our real lives every day since physics is part of our everyday lives and we don't even realize it! 
We just finished some activities that involve calculating speed. Before Christmas we also worked on a lesson about simple machines which we will revisit later.

Have a great weekend!