Group News
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October
Book Orders will come home this week.
You can access the online ordering by going to www.scholastic.com/bookclubs.
You will need to register as a parent the first time you order. Our class code is GL7HN. Orders are due Oct. 12. At press time, I am waiting, not so
patiently, for the September order to arrive.
First Grade – Wednesday
Mornings
First graders continued their scientific thinking this
week. We did many different activities
that required looking as similarities and differences in books, animals,
objects and even ideas. It was a fun
conversation. We’ll continue reading
Flat Stanley and the Magic Lamp next week as well as comparing some very
dissimilar objects. Remember, there is
one comparison activity for your child to complete with your help.
Second Grade – Tuesday
Mornings
Second graders also were using scientific thinking in their
evaluation of the fairy tales. I think
my directions were not very clear with last week’s homework, and I am sorry for
that. Your children only need to read
two fairy tales for the chart. They may
use more than one like for a book if they need the space. We will fill in other fairy tales together.
We also started a series of lessons from the Thinking Skills
program on categorizing. This week we just tried to take our shapes and put
them in two groups that were distinctly different, then two groups with one
commonality. This moves us to using Venn
Diagrams to see how things are connected.
Hopefully you had a chance to see what your child did for their Venn
diagram. Next week I’ll introduce a
three way Venn diagram. A very difficult
concept, so this will be an introduction only.
We will also begin outlining our own fairy tales.
Third Grade – Tuesday Afternoons
Well, we finished the Doggone Mystery. At the end of the mystery, I asked the
children to write a note to a Judge convincing the judge that there was enough
evidence to bring this dog-napper to trial.
I will be handing these back next week.
Ask your child to see their work, or maybe this weekend, ask if they can
remember the details well enough to tell you the evidence against the
dog-napper.
We also worked more on Hands-On Equations. The “new” group is into lesson five already,
which is fabulous. The “old” group
continued with the word problems. They
are learning many new vocabulary words while trying to remember the words from
last year. Many were going to share the problems
with you, so I hope you’ve seen them.
Next week we’ll review the elements of a mystery story and
begin outlining our stories.
Fourth Grade – Monday Afternoons
The students completed just two Language Arts Mind Builder
problems this week. The first one,
proved to be easy enough. However, the second one was quite tough. The students have brought home the puzzle to
finish and to maybe get some help from a parent. Enjoy the challenge.
I went over in detail what was expected to be in the A to Z
books. Much of the research for this
book can be done on the internet, but I’d love it if there was some book
research too.
Next week, we’re going to finish our Shopping Mall Mystery as
we didn’t have a chance to look at it this week. Then I will give them a picture mystery to
solve. Last, we’ll work on the A to Z
books, hopefully in the computer lab.
Fifth Grade – Wednesday
Afternoons
Again, we were all about the Stock Market Game. The games
have begun. Only a few teams have made
trades so far. A team will not be fully
in the game until that first trade is made.
We reviewed, in detail, how to complete the SMG Journal Page. This page must be filled out in order to make
a trade. Once filled out the students
will bring it to me to get approval to buy or sell. We now have nine teams competing. Wells Fargo Advisors is generously paying our
entry fee into the competition, so I was able to add two more teams to get even
smaller groups. I will be allowing very
little time in class for the SMG after this week. We’ll be moving on to a unit I call Money
Math. The students will learn how to
become a millionaire. I know, don’t you
wish we had been taught that in fifth grade.
Look for more information on this next week.
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