~Fabulous Friday~

WELCOME!  We finished our month on friendship and what it takes to be a good friend.  I am happy to report that all of the students earned this trait this past month and are a part of the Character of the Month club. 

Weekly Quote

   
     This means we are “spotting”  new traits around the room for the month of October.  Our movie hint this month was “Hakana Matata!”  I am happy to report that all of my groups were able to figure out the movie we are learning from this month is Lion King.  We will work on a different trait each week from the movie and looking for students that displays them throughout the month. 

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  Unit Introduction and the Concept of Connections -   This week we finished our introductory unit on connections.  On Monday, the students and I went over the rubric we were using for the coat of arms project.  We talked about being a good presenter by making eye contact with their audience and a loud clear speaking voice.  Then they spread out around the room to practice their presentation for 10 minutes.  After that they were ready to present!  Each student came up in front of the class and presented their coat of arms.  The children had great connections they presented to the class.  We will continue to work throughout the year on our presentation skills and I am looking forward to seeing them grow with confidence in this area!  Thank you for all your help with this project at home.  Due to early dismissal we did not meet on Tuesday.

2^nd Grade:  Eldorado – On Monday, we finished up our lesson on Eldorado by Edgar Allan Poe.  The students worked through the meaning of the poem by learning to use our reading analyzer.  It was great to see them develop a deeper meaning to the poem as they learned to use this tool.  The class discussion grew and you could see them understand it further as we talked about what we knew and what we needed to clarify.  It was great this week to see them change their original thoughts to the poem as we talked about some of our questions as a class.

On Tuesday, the students worked with a new poem The Walrus and the Carpenter.  This time we read the poem together, but then they completed the reading analyzer on their own.   To help with visualizing the poem I shared a clip from the movie Alice in Wonderland so they could see the poem come to life!  Some friends need to finish their analyzers next week and then we will discuss the poem as a class to clarify any questions and see how they did independently with the worksheet.

3^rd Grade:  Look to the Stars – The Genre of Myth – On Monday, we finished our study on a myth in order to come up with a class definition.  After reading through 3 myths together we successfully defined a myth and began to define a legend.  We took the lesson a little further and looked back at all 3 stories we read and identified the change that occurred in each story.  We also had a final presentation on retelling a story using our myths.  Our retells showed huge improvement!  I was thrilled to see we remembered our areas of improvement and fixed them in our final presentations.

On Tuesday, we began by briefly comparing a legend to a myth.  We then began our new unit on Myths and Legends – Grammar.  We had a brief discussion on nouns.  Then they read over the story “Iduna and Her Apples: How Loki put the Gods in Danger.”  While reading the story we highlighted our nouns we found.  We will continue with Myths and Grammar next week.

4^th Grade:  Changes in Vocabulary – On Monday, the students learned how many of our English words come from a combination of Greek and Latin word parts.  The students received a worksheet on Greek and Latin word parts and a packet to complete it.  We went over the directions and then read the introduction together.  From there the students were asked to complete part 1 independently. 

On Tuesday, after having a better understanding of the history of Greek and Latin word parts they worked with a partner to identify the prefix, root word or suffix.  Then they used the packet from the previous day to define the words.  We had a few minutes left to discuss some of our answers and will finish this lesson in two weeks.  I will not meet with my 4^th graders next week because they will be at Camp Goodfellow.

MATH

1^st Grade:  Heavier or Lighter… On Monday, we finished talking about ways to measure a box for our friends Imi and Zani.  Then we worked together to write a response back to our friends to help them with their question.  We hope this will let our friends figure out if they can ship the box of supplies to our classroom!  The children worked on a picture to send to them showing them their ideas too.  We faxed them our letter and can’t wait to hear back from our friends!

      On Tuesday, we were excited to hear back from our friends so quickly!  They came up with a great idea to have a weight activity at the measurement fair, but they need our help in answering some questions about weight.  We need to compare the two words heavy and light and work towards understanding these two new concepts to share back our information with Imi and Zani.  We explored the classroom with different objects and became a human scale.  Each child took turns in this process and got to weigh many objects.  We ended the day reading the story Just a Little Bit More making predictions throughout the story on if the scale would move.  Luckily, at the end our animal friends were able to play on the seesaw and lift the elephant in the air!

2^nd Grade:  Marble Crash Test...  On Monday, we finished our investigation on measuring a tunnel for Dru and Teller.  Now it was time for us to write a letter to our friends to let them know the right way to measure the tunnel.  We wrote a letter as a class to send to them and the students practiced this skill in their math journals.

     We were thrilled to receive a new fax from Dru and Teller on Thursday!  They were impressed with our writing and sent us a list of skills as a reminder to being a good writer.  Our friends need to buy a new car and have asked for our help in choosing a safe car.  They have asked us to explore some theories on length by conducting a marble crash test!  Before we get started with our test we worked on a few practice exercises on measuring length as a review. This will help us when we begin our experiment!

3^rd Grade:  Measuring Me…We began this week by coming together as a class to compare our measurements from measuring around the room.  We checked on measurements within our group and then compared them to the other group.  We were able to find a few reasons for error based on measuring the same identical item, measuring length verse width and making sure we start and stop and the right places.  After figuring out these things we introduced a new word to our group – accuracy.  As a class we said accuracy is how correct you measure something.  We then began our next exercise of measuring me.  We started this project out with each person coming up with their own list on what we can measure on a person, the tool to use, and how to measure it. 

     On Thursday, we talked about our lists as a class and then had a better idea of things we can measure on a person as everyone was stuck on length.  After we discussed these ideas it was time to investigate them.  The children began by estimating their measurements.  After they make estimation they took a peace of adding machine tape to represent the distance.   This process made it easier for them to measure the real distance by measuring the paper they made as the template.  We will continue more with this investigation next week.

Please remember a few students still need to turn in their Hunt for Capacity paper.  As these are completed please send them back in.  If possible please send in the bottles you used so the class can use them to study capacity at a later time.

4^th Grade:  You Either Have It or You Don’t… This week my group started with our first lesson and we are learning all about math attributes we can give to shapes.  We started out with a shape on the board that they quickly identified as a parallelogram.  They then listed everything they knew about this shape and we discussed our ideas.  Then we moved onto a rectangle and repeated the same process.  The question we had to figure out – Is a rectangle a parallelogram?  At first the answer was no, but as we remembered our definitions we changed our answer.  We decided that a rectangle is also a parallelogram.  We discovered that shapes can have more than one name to define its attributes.

     Thursday we started the game of You Either Have It or You Don’t – as a class we are exploring one shape at a time and deciding what attributes define the shape.  This week we looked at a polygon and quadrilateral.  I am impressed with the children’s knowledge of shapes.  We are now adding in the right term to define the attributes they are mentioning.  I am encouraging the students to use their new terms they used to define the shapes as we define them properly.

IMPORTANT DATES

October 10^th & 11^th:  4^th Grade Camp Goodfellow

October 20^th:  End of first Grading Period 

October 21^st:  Fall Recess – No School

October 28th:  Fall Parties

November 2nd:  Early Dismissal

November 3rd:  Early Dismisaal
November 4th:  No School