Time Out Tuesday!

This week I have discovered a skill that the class is having great difficulty with. Take a look in their homework folder tonight. On one side they had to put words in alphabetical order. That is not the problem, unless the words have the same first and second letter. The skill that I discovered that I had to call "time out" on is the skill on the other side of that paper. The children have to decide what word or words one would find on a page given the guide words. Some children did not finish, some did finish but with less accuracy. So, I decided to send it home with them to look at the activity again. They are to bring that sheet back to school tomorrow for us to check. Even if they tell you that have completed the activity, please take a look at it. We will working on this skill the rest of the week and I may have a homework assignment or two dealing with this as well.This is a skill that just takes practice. I cannot expect them to use the dictionary voluntarily if they don't know how to use the guide words. Any chance that you have to focus on the order of letters in a word would really be a huge help.

We had to go back today and review how to read a ruler up to the quarter inch. The children are not completely sure of this skill as well. You can count on an assignment or two for the children to come home and measure items using standard measurement, inches and feet. My hope is for each child to get to a point where they can make conversions from inches to miles and everything in between. Tomorrow we will discover if your child is a square, tall rectangle, or short rectangle based on DaVinci's theory of mathematical ratios. Get ready.. they will be coming home tomorrow night ready to find out about you!

Today in Science Lab, we worked with objects to discover how friction and gravity work. You will want to ask which object seemed to move the fastest and what surface helped to produce the fastest object.

This week in spelling, our words are examples of Closed Syllables. The children wrote the rules for Closed Syllables in their notebook. They will be expected to write these rules instead of dictation this week. The rules are: 1) a closed syllable ends with a consonant and 2) the vowel before the final consonant has a short sound.

We have begun a new class novel entitled, The Whipping Boy. The children will be responsible for answering questions at the end of each chapter and occasional extra activity. Tonight they have a list of rather difficult vocabulary words to just learn how to pronounce. We worked on these words in class and I asked them to practice reading them at least two times tonight. Please make sure that list returns to school tomorrow so the children can finish creating their bingo board with these words. I want the children to be comfortable reading these words as they get to them in the book. You will want to ask your child about the custom of that time period of a whipping boy. As we progress through the book, this conflict of having a whipping boy will become the main idea of several class discussions.

The children have now begun searching for poems that they find interesting, humorous, or thought provoking. I want the children to be more aware of the various kinds of poems. Each child has been given a poetry book all of their own. Inside this book, they will collect different poems and comment on what makes these poems special.

Thanks for checking the blogs on a regular basis. This one contained some very important information that I really wanted to make sure everyone saw. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.