Jan 25- 28

Reading:  We have been reading Scholastic News and focusing on the text features.  We have also been determinig the main idea and supporting details, and the author's purpose.

A fun new things we have started is Debate it! The students are given a questions and come up with their own opinion from that of the author.  The class then has a discussion on how they feel.  We discussed using accountable talk to ensure everyone is being respectful.  There is a a bulletin board outside our classroom with the newest Debate It question.  The students will be posting their opinions on the board during the week.

We had a spelling test this week.  Next week we will have a Latin/Greek test.

Writing:  The students finished up their deep sea creature writing and foldable.  This is always such a fun writing to learn about all these strange creatures.

Grammar:  We learned about when to use an apostrophe.  There are only 2 times.  When the word is a contraction and when a word is possessive.  The students then practiced making words possessive.  They need to break the habit of putting an apostrophe everytime they add an S to a word!

Projects:  We finished up our severe weather projects.  They students will be presenting them to the 2nd graders on Monday.


** The class as a whole has been having a problem with behavior since coming back from Christmas.  I think part of the problem is everyone is very comfortable in the classroom so they are forgetting to follow the rules. This week I had to be much more strict. Usually if a clip gets moved down to the bottom I send an email to parents, but I let them know ahead of time I was having them move their clips this week just so they could become aware of their behavior. On Tuesday there were a lot of clips moved down but by Thursday there were only 1 or 2. Hopefully by Monday we will be back on track! If you could have a chat with your child about the importance of following the classroom rules and being respectful of others, that would be great!

Jan. 11-14

Reading:  We have moved on to reading non-fiction text.  The third graders are working on finding their answers in the text and highlighting.  Then they have to restate their questions when answering.  The fouth graders need to also use evidence based terms when answering.

We took a spelling test on Thursday.  Look for new spelling words on Monday.  We will be taking a Latin/Greek test on Thursday 1/21.

Writing: The students continued working on researching their deep sea creatures.  Most finished up on Thursday and are moving on to writing their paper.  These creatures are so much fun to learn about!!

Grammar: We finished up learning about simple, complex and compound sentences.  The students also know about coordinating and subordinating conjunctions.  We took an assessment on this on Thursday.  

Projects: The students are coninuting working on their severe weather projects.  They have finished up their presentations and are now working their models to go with their projects.

Misc.

* The students received new book orders.  I will be submitting on January 21st.  If for any reason you would like to order and need me to hold of on submitting the order please let me know.

*  We are out of paper towels.  I have the students wash their hands ever day before lunch to help prevent sickness so we go through a lot of papertowels.  If you would like to donate a roll or two that would be great!