Good Morning!
I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful holiday season! Welcome to 2009! Here’s a look at the week ahead for Room 15:
In Reading Workshop we will begin our nonfiction reading projects. Students will decide on a topic they’d like to learn more about and will formulate a couple of guiding questions to help as they learn and explore. They will be given time in class to work, but will be encouraged to spend time outside of class as well. Students will gather information from various sources, decide what information is most important, and will share their information with the rest of the class. The manner in which information is presented will be somewhat open ended. We will discuss possible presentation ideas in class. A list of what we develop will be posted on the blog for parents to view.
In Writing Workshop, we will begin looking at the six traits of writing a little more closely than we have in the past. We will begin with looking at ideas and will do a series of lessons around this trait. Students will gain practice reading and evaluating example papers with a rubric focused on ideas and will be given the opportunity to evaluate their own work as well.
In Math Workshop, we will continue with measurement. We will discuss and learn about standard units of measure and move to metric measurement by the end of the week. We will also be learning and practicing some multiplication games. Students will bring home a packet of all of these games sometime next week so parents and students can practice together. ExcelMath topics will include dividing up to 14, rounding to the nearest 10, multiplying 1 by 2-digit numbers without regrouping, and estimating weight and distance measurements. An ExcelMath test will be given on Wednesday.
In Word Study this week we will begin looking at parts of speech. We will focus on nouns for the next two weeks and the move into pronouns by the end of next week. A Friday test will be given to check progress on understanding of nouns in lieu of a formal spelling test. We will take a benchmark spelling test on Wednesday.
We will continue to work on Old Palo Alto this week and hopefully finish up by Friday 1/23. The following week we will begin with science rotations.
We will finish learning cursive letters this week. Students will have periodic cursive practice homework in the upcoming weeks.
During computer time we will download Timez Attack on our new computers (handed down from fifth grade), learn how to add bookmarks, set a home page in a web browser, and how to install updates.
I think that about does it for the week. Let me know if you have any questions!
