Daily wrap up

Hello,

The islands are coming along well.  Once again, the placement of rivers seems to be the hardest.  I am constantly asking where water runs and I am constantly hearing, "downhill."  Easy to say, hard to show on an island made of dough.  Overall I am very pleased with the quality this year.  Students are taking their time on the key and the color schemes.  I think you'll be impressed with their creations.

We read a book called Miss Alaineus by Debra Frasier this afternoon.  A fifth grader in the story really messes up her vocabulary homework by not looking up miscellaneous and making up a definition based on what she thinks it is.  She gets laughed at by the whole class, but then makes up for it by taking responsibility and turning her mistake into a great project.  We are going to do one of the girl's homework assignments this week.  She had to find three words in a dictionary that started with the letter A and put them in a sentence.  Then she had to pick three B words and write another sentence.  Then C, D, and on and on.  Our class will be doing this with the whole alphabet.  I told them to pace themselves.  They have all week.  Try to do five or six a night.  We'll see how that goes. 

We're teaching charts and graphs from chapter four in our Math in Focus books in our homerooms.  Occasionally you may see what looks like double math homework.  Charts and graphs will be part of our reading informational texts lessons.

Thanks to everyone who made play dough.  We had enough for everyone and noone felt like they had to limit their island because of the amount of clay they had.  Thanks for helping out.  Islands will be able to come home as I grade them.  The grading process includes a little one on one interview where they have to answer any of my questions.  So far so good.  I graded four at the end of the day today.

I hope you enjoyed the super bowl.  Some kids said they stayed up for the whole thing.  They are probably as tired as I am right now.  I'm going home for a nap before dinner.

Have a great night.  Thanks for reading.

Mr. Shea