~ SHARING SUNDAY ~
We have made it to May and this year has flown by...I cannot believe that next week will be our final week of High Ability.
AROUND THE SCHOOL
May 7th-11th: Teacher Appreciation Week
May 9 & 10th: Carnations for sale $1 each for Mother's Day
May 11th: Family Dance Night: Glow Theme 6-7:30
May 15th: PTO Meeting
May 17th: Title 1 Celebration Night: "Let's Go Camping"
May 23rd: Field Day
(Rain Date May 24th)
May 25th: 9am Awards Program
May 25th: Last Day of School
May 30th: Report Cards Posted
LANGUAGE ARTS
1ST GRADE: HIEROGLYPHICS: This week we continued on our journey exploring hieroglyphics. This week we worked on different projects with them as we wrote our names in hieroglyphs and we cracked another secret message! 
Next, we took the time to discuss the importance of researching a topic. We talked about three areas we cover when researching: What we think we know, what we want to learn, and what we learned. We discussed how what we think we know is actually our background knowledge on a topic. Depending on what you are researching some people may have more or less in this area.
What we want to learn is making sure we understand what we are researching and a way to question the topic. The last area of what we learned is all the new information we gather in the process of research. However, we discussed that after you thoroughly research a topic that what we learned becomes your background knowledge the next time you hear this topic presented to you.
As we looked through our current research, they had some questions they wanted to follow-up on for additional research. Next week we will take some time in the research process to investigate our questions. We will wrap up our final unit next week.
2ND GRADE: THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: These guys have been troopers! We have worked at a very fast pace with this novel study to have time for our final project and it looks like we made it. I am happy to say that we have completed our story! 
This week we took time to make a text to text connection back to Edward and the focus of can a broken heart heal to this story and the 4 different hearts conflict with light verse dark. It took us on a journey with 4 different characters and explained what makes up each of their hearts: Despereaux - Destined to be our hero, his heart is full of light and love. His love for the princess fills his heart full of bravery and courage. Roscuro -has a heart that healed in a crooked way, which makes him focus on revenge to Princess Pea.
His sole focus is now only on hurting the Princess because she hurt him. Mig - Her heart is full of desire and want. This clouds her judgment as she is so fully engaged with the dream of becoming a princess. Princess Pea - Her heart has a tiny bit of dark and then full of light. She has a small area full of hate towards Roscurro for killing her mother and a dark patch because she is till mourning the loss of her mother. However, for the most part she has light in her hear full of kindness and empathy. 
Our book has taken us through 4 characters journeys and focused on light verse dark. We saw a strong message takeover the book in book the 4th on forgiveness. We see Princess Pea and Despereaux feel a strange feeling begin to take-over their heart, where they learned that they must offer forgiveness to another in order for their heart to not be consumed with darkness. This message teaches us, that although difficult at times for us to truly heal we must offer our forgiveness to another, so we don't let our own hearts become filled with hatred and ultimately darkness. Next week we will watch the movie together and track the differences from the movie and book.
3RD GRADE: BLACK BEAUTY: These guys are continuing to work hard with me as we are working at a fast pace to complete this book. This week we saw Beauty deal with some more challenging times in his life based on his treatment. We continued to focus on his treatment from his owners, stable men or job to see how that has affected Beauty. We have recently seen Beauty in the prime of his life become damaged due to some poor choices made by others.
It is the actions of others that will have to affect Beauty for the remainder of his life. We will continue to follow Beauty's journey and see how his different human interactions continue to change his life. Through his tough times we continue to see him live by the advice his mother gave him - doing what is expected of you at all times to keep your good name. MATH
1ST GRADE: CHAPTER CHECK-UP: It was time for our chapter check-up. This chapter covered the topics of congruent and symmetrical. We took a moment to remember that for a shape to be congruent it had to be the same size and shape.
Next week the students will revisit the unit assessment from the beginning of the year. After the chapter check-up, we took some time to review the year. We filled out our glossary and reviewed the different terms they learned throughout the year. They took this home and I encouraged them to look it over as a study guide for their final assessment they will complete next week. 2ND GRADE: UNIT ASSESSMENT:
The time has come to revisit our Unit Assessment. This should like familiar to the students because it is identical to what they took in the beginning of the year. Now that we have completed our unit all the information on the unit assessment has been covered in class. It is exciting to see the growth with the students from their pre-test to the post-test. At a quick glance, they had HUGE growth! To finish the week the students got to play Kahoot.
This was our first time using it this year, but some were very excited from remembering it last year.
I have selected several different Kahoot games for the students to complete over the next several classes to add onto to some review fun on the year.
3RD GRADE: UNIT ASSESSMENT: This week our students took their unit assessment. This is the same test they took in the beginning of the year. Now we have covered all the material on the assessment and this is a tool that will show their growth over the year. Next week we will have some review fun from all the lessons we covered over the year.
Have a Wonderful Week,
