Wow.. only a few more Mondays to go! It is truly hard to believe that we are nearing the end of the year and your children will be heading to fourth grade. I need the children to continue to focus and do their best work.
This week we are back to our normal schedule with just a couple of changes to the schedule. This week we have Guidance class on Thursday along with the First Grade Rehearsal show. Then on Friday, we visit the fourth grade classrooms and teachers. This gives the children time to ask questions and observe what a fourth grade classroom looks like.
We will have our Spelling test on Friday. The children are also coming home with a Reading Comprehension activity on an Italian Race Car Driver. This comes on the heals of our Science cars that we "fine tuned" and added a sail to on Friday. The children had to work together in small groups to decide if they needed or wanted to redesign their car, knowing that a sail made out of cardboard had to be added. The wind did cooperate with us on Friday. I hope to get one more run in before we reflect on this project.
We will begin Lesson 11 in Wordly Wise. The children will be bringing this workbook home this week for homework. If you would then encourage you to take 5 minutes to practice matching the words and the definitions for a test on Friday.
We will complete our Real-Fantasy-Real writing samples this week. The children will organize their stories and begin writing tomorrow. They will probably bring home their story one night this week and read it to you. You will want to focus on the exact moments when the story moves from the real to fantasy and back. AND, ask the children to explain the "thread" that exists throughout the entire story. We worked on that element today in writer's workshop. We read the story, Where the Wild Things Are specifically listening to the how or what the writer uses as the common thread in the real and in the fantasy.
The children were given a new class novel today, Caleb's Story. This time they are allowed to read any and all the book on their own terms. However, it would be the expectation that all the children would be completely finished with the book by Friday. There is plenty of independent reading time built in the day. So this is not an unrealistic goal.
Tonight for homework, the children have a social studies activity about Christopher Columbus. They are to use their social studies book and practice the critical reading strategies that we have been discussing in class. I did put them in groups on Friday to get started. Some are finished, but others need to finish tonight for homework. The words that go in the blanks have to be words from the reading and have to tell a true story of Christopher Columbus's travels.
We will have our Math Test tomorrow. The children have a practice study test in their homework folders. We reviewed each skill and they had plenty of time to ask questions. Our next unit will explore more multiplication and division algorithms, positive and negative numbers, and sharing money, with a review of fractions, arrays, and area.
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