Twenty-Ninth Day

Two more seminars completed.That's 6 for anyone keeping track other than me. We listened to a nonfiction selection Animal House about pets from the White House past. We took a dictation test on words with initial consonant blends. We read another nonfiction selection What Pets Need and compared it to our fantasy selection Flip. Inspired by Flip we drew and wrote descriptive sentences about a pet.

We completed more work with parts of 10. We will have a test on Topic 5 on Thursday.

[U1/Wk4/D4&5]

Twenty-Sixth Day

Today I recorded one student being completed with the Unit 1 Project. Soon students will be ready to go to "seminar." This means they are ready for the revision step of the writing process of their personal narratives. I will be reporting regularly how many students have completed the seminar process. During this process they will receive positive and constructive feedback of their writing from their peers.

Today we analyzed the structure of a fantasy selection. We discovered the elements of a plot.

We began Topic 5 where we will explore the utility of the the "tens frame." We also took the Topic 4 test and of the 24 students taking the test 17 passed with a scaled score of 14 or better. Two students earned a 23, 1 earned a 22, 2-21, 2-20, 3-19, and 2-18.

[U1/Wk4/D1]

Sixteenth Day

Today was a good and busy day in Room 11. We had a discussion of needs v. wants. The children were able to identify 4 basic needs: air, water, food, and shelter. We read a non-fiction selection called What People and Animals Need. We then took a dictation test on our '-an' and '-at' words and some sight words. Everyone is on target. We read a decodable non-fiction photo essay called Who Am I? We then read the main selection of the week, a fantasy, called Pam and Sam. We made a character analysis table in order to help retell the story in our own words. We were hesitant that this would work at first, but once we got going, we didn't want to stop. We are also learning to listen to each other's responses and to respond to those as well.

In math we used addition sentences and pictures to show the commutative property (we did not call it this). We are going to take our next math test on Monday, contrary to what was posted yesterday. The reason for this is that the last lesson of the Topic is quite involved and takes a while to get through. The children really should have time to go over the lesson at home before taking a test. However, this means a rare occasion for homework over the weekend. Homework in not usually collected on Monday, but an exception will need to be made. Those not having their homework on Monday will not be penalized, but those that do will be given credit.

We had our first formal science lesson today about matter. We discussed the 3 forms of matter (tested standard). We brainstormed a list of common examples of each form (tested skill).

I hope everyone has a good day off. Please remember that reading logs are due on Friday.