One-Hundred Third Day

Our reading batteries are complete. We have one more day to complete the writing test. Unfortunately, students who missed any portion of the writing process due to absences are unable to make up that time. The good news is many of the students have not needed the entire amount of time allotted for taking the test, but some have. We will take our science test on the states of matter this Friday.

Seventy-Seventh Day

We took a writing assessment today. Exactly 50% of the students passed. After some follow-up instruction, those students not passing will be allowed to retake the exam before second reporting period unsatisfactory notices go home.

We have also begun testing fluency and comprehension for this reporting period. Students must read 45 wpm and pass a comprehension test, and read 108 sight words fluently in order to get a 3 on the next progress report.

Fifth Day

Thanks to all of the family members who took the time to attend the Back-to-School evening. It was nice to see everyone. Thank you as well for your questions. Just after everyone left, one of the teachers came across what we think is going to be very close to our 6 week writing assessment. It looks much less daunting than what I was attempting to describe to you. So, I will scrap the Flow Map plans and have the students do a Circle Map and probably a Tree Map (classifying) which should give us more than enough material for our exam. One thing I didn't mention last night is that your child will be completing Thinking Maps every year based on what they know about themselves (or should anyway). I usually suggest to parents that they keep a copy (scan to flash drive) of these for their child to look back on when they are older. On that same flash drive you might also take pictures of projects or keep a copy of our class video compilation. This flash drive will then become your child's grade school portfolio.

Today we reviewed 'f' and 'h'. We worked with rhyming. We reviewed sight words: 'a' and 'have'. We shared with a partner something "we had" and then wrote about it in our journals.

For PE we played passing relay games in cooperative teams. Shoes became an issue yet again today when slip-on shoes came off during an activity.

In math we continued with number sense activities by combining two number patterns to represent a total. A corresponding math sheet was sent for homework as usual along with a practice writing/sound sheet.