It's great to be back. My spring break included a two-day backpacking trip through the snowy Smoky Mountains that resulted in one child, Ty, spraining his ankle, and the other, Muluken, getting sick and feeling as though he was going to pass out. These are not conditions you hope to encounter when in the middle of a snow storm miles and miles from civilization. We obviously survived so all was good. We learned the importance of remaining calm when encountered with adversity. Oh, we also learned that if people listened to Dad more often they wouldn't get hurt and sick. I can only assume that's a lesson that will have to be experienced many more times before it truly sinks in.
I had an opportunity to coach in Ms. Breland's class for a few minutes on Monday. It was silent reading time and her kids were so incredibly invested in their books. Later in the day when we pulled out our own books for silent reading time I noticed our group was equally invested. As much fun as it is to have a week or a summer away from the responsibilities of school I know most of the kids greatly appreciate the opportunity to come back and fall into their comfortable routines - particularly reading and writing workshop.
Speaking of reading and writing, Mr. Chris has spent this past week working with the kids on their magazines as well as guiding a small inquiry into synonyms and antonyms. We'll continue this work next week while also exploring homonyms and contractions.
Here's a sampling of the other things we've been studying...
Math - The kids took a short geometry assessment earlier in the week before turning their attention to a study of slides, flips, and turns. This is one of those math standards I truly do not understand (in terms of why it's important to know) but we made good use of our time. I challenged the kids to find all the ways they could to arrange four crayons given the following rules: (1) they must be placed end-to-end; (2) they must be arranged at straight angles or 90 degree angles; and (3) you cannot have any duplicates, even if they are flipped or turned from the original. This provided a nice spatial challenge. In the end we found there were sixteen different possibilities. Each of the kids used these sixteen solutions to create a small deck of cards we then used to play a game. We will teach this game to you during Curriculum Night (which, I believe, is next week).
Science - We are learning about landforms. The kids are working in pairs to study and teach about mountains, glaciers, islands, valleys, caverns, plateaus, plains, oceans, rivers, lakes, and so on. Next week we'll turn our attention to catastrophic events such as earthquakes.
A few final notes...
1. Sparkleberry Fair is April 27th. Our class will be singing from 10:55-11:15. I hope you can make it out.
2. A book order form is coming home on Friday. If you are interested, you can order books online. I sent out the information about this via e-mail on Thursday afternoon. In case you missed it here it is again:
Scholastic Book Clubs Ordering Information
www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Class Activation Code: GY8VG
Ordering online is fast and easy:
- REGISTER at www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
- ENTER the Class Activation Code at the top of this letter
- CHOOSE from thousands of print titles, value packs, and Storia eBooks
- SUBMIT the order to your child's teacher
- EARN FREE Books for you and the classroom too!
Have a great weekend,
Chris
No comments:
Post a Comment