Field Trip to Intel Museum

We had a great time on our field trip to the Intel Museum! Here are a few memories....

Time Flies!

Wow, I know that I had missed a week of posting but I realized I missed 2 weeks! That's what conferences will do to a teacher. It was so great to get to sit down and talk one-on-one about your children. I really do adore all of them and learning with them.

We have been slowly getting through Dear Mr. Henshaw. I was actually glad to hear that some of you felt this book was too low for your children....you are right! For many of them it is, but our first two books were really about getting procedures down and learning how reading activities will work. We should be starting our new book in the next week so stay tuned!

Last week, math threw nearly everyone for a loop. Basic algebra when you are writing expressions that can't be solved was a really tough concept to grasp. As we moved on and learned to read word problems to find the value of a variable it started to become a bit more clear but I see us working on this more in the future. We will be moving into our next chapter which will dive into multiplication and division so I look forward to math becoming a little bit more challenging.

Science and Social Studies have taken a back seat for the past week or so. We normally cover these subjects in the afternoon so our half days didn't allow us to get to them. I am sure the kids will be happy to welcome them back this week!

This up coming week is our first field trip also and we are all excited!  Hope you have had a great few weeks and are ready to get back to a normal schedule on Monday.

Crazy Like Monkey's

We learned about similes this week. To prep the kids and give them a clear understanding we did a little experiment. Each student got a bag of Pop Rocks. The got to try them out and then we made a poster..."The Pop Rocks exploded in my mouth like....." They had a blast and I think it really helped make the connection.

We continued our study of Dear Mr. Henshaw this week. The students made diagrams of a section of the book where the main character describes the area where he lives. They turned out really well! Everyone has done such a good job of embracing what "Score 4" work means. They now know that they have to do their very best and when I ask them, "Is this a score 4?" They consistently take their paper and head back to make it better. Makes me happy!

In Social Studies we have moved onto discussing the Indian tribes of California. We started learning about how to take notes. Social Studies lends itself really well to learning how to take good notes. First we are learning 2 column notes. We will be practicing a lot in class.

Diorama's are due Monday! Everyone seems to be excited to share but are nervous for their oral presentations. I am really looking forward to seeing what students came up with and hearing what they learned.