January 25, 2013 Update...

Dear Parents and Students,

Thank you for visiting our blog today.  During the next few weeks, we have some long term projects that the students will be given. This is a great opportunity for your child to learn the value of making a plan and working on a little bit of the task each night.  We will have a geometric figure project coming home this week and a moon phases project coming home next week.  Be on the lookout!  Don't forget about those AR goals for this nine weeks either.  We just finished our book, The Chocolate Touch, and everyone had an opportunity to get 2 full AR points.  Check out below to find out what else we've been doing in Terrific Room 216!

Phonics/Grammar:  We learned our new list of vobulary/spelling words that correlated with The Chocolate Touch.  We also practiced the phonetic rule of dropping the "e" before adding "ing" when there is a long vowel in the word followed by a bossy "e".  We compared this with the rule of doubling the final consonant before adding the "ing" in short vowel words.

Reading:  We completed our book, The Chocolate Touch.  We finished our comprehension packet on all 12 chapters.  We compared this book to King Midas, a folktale.  We worked on our "bookbag reports", writing about the main character, the setting, summarizing the story, and giving a recommendation.  These will be coming home on Monday and the children are to collect 5 items that represent something related to the story.  An example would be to put a silver coin in the bag which represents the coin that John Midas found on the sidewalk.  Another example would be to put a star in the bag, which represents the wish John had of everything he touched turning into chocolate. Be creative!  Bags need to come back to school to share on Tuesday.

Math:  We reviewed the multiple strategies we have used for adding and subtracting. We also learned the partial product method when adding.  This was a great review for the kids and they did a wonderful job this week in math.  We also completed several challenging word problems that began with an unknown and the children had to figure out how to come to the answer. The clue words were often misleading in this situation. 

Social Studies:  We read all about Jackie Robinson and his determination to end segregation in the major leagues.  We watched a video on Tumblebooks, used nonfiction books to answer comprehension questions, and we compared Jackie to Martin Luther King on a Venn diagram. 

Class News and Reminders...

Tonight is Bingo Night!  Come and have some fun...

February 8th is the school dance.  The theme is "black and white" so start planning those snazzy outfits now!  The dancing will begin at 6:30.  I've been practicing my moves, so I can't wait to see you on the dance floor.

Thank you, Mrs. Farley, for supplying all of the oreos for  an awesome moon phases project we will be doing next week!  She even snuck an extra package in there for my thighs!