Thursday

This morning, in our reading/writing block, we reviewed the characteristics of a summary.  These included; sticking to the main idea, using your own words, being concise and to the point and writing in a logical order.  Then we discussed how good readers automatically stop and summarize what they have read as they are reading to ensure they are comprehending the text.  We also reviewed that good readers have a question in mind or a purpose for reading as they read text.  Then we used a graphic organizer to identify information from a chapter in the book Wildfires that answered our purpose for reading.

After that, I did a review lesson on the difference between plural nouns and possessive nouns.  My main focus was on when to use an apostrophe.  I'm sure many of you have noticed that your child uses apostrophes ALL of the time, right?  Well, my hopes is this lesson will remind them when it is appropriate to sue one and when it's not...fingers crossed!

In math we took the first part of the unit 5 assessment.  As a side note, this unit consisted fractions, probability, money, multiplication and division.  This was a lot of material to master.  Therefore, we did not get to any of the challenge which included decimals.  We will complete the assessment tomorrow and begin unit 6 on Monday.

Before enjoying lunch and outdoor recess we went to art.

After recess, we had an unscheduled fire drill.  There was a faulty smoke detector, so we spent a little bit longer outside than usual.  Therefore, I had to adjust the assignments for the afternoon.

While I pulled individual students to do informal reading assessments, the rest of the class worked on reading groups assignments.

Lions:  Reread chapter 18 and drew and labeled Murray and Stumpy's new home based on the description in the book.

Bears:  Chose 5 new vocabulary words from their book and used them in sentences that showed they knew their meaning.

Crabs:  Read pages 74-80 and listed unknown words.

We will end the day making a special book for out awesome high school intern.  Since tomorrow is her last day, I wanted the children to have a chance to create something she can have to remember us.