Happy Halloween!

We had a lot of fun at school today, and it was great to see all the different costumes. In the morning, students pretended to be realtors trying to persuade witches, ghosts, or vampires to buy their haunted house. There were some spooky descriptions in their paragraphs! They then made a picture of their house out of construction paper. After the Halloween Fair, we came back to the classroom to work on our ofrendas. Some of the students still need to finish decorating theirs, so they will bring them home today. They can be brought back to school any day next week before Thursday because on Thursday we'll present them to the class!

Don't forget to return the purple conference form if you haven't already! With this big a class, I'll need to strictly stick to the time schedule created from those forms. Unfortunately, that means that if someone is late, I may not be able to meet with that person until later that day. Thank you for your understanding and for being on time! I'll leave our awesome Puerto Rican and Day of the Dead displays up in the hallway, so if you arrive early, there'll be plenty to look at.

October 17, 2013

The students did a wonderful job researching and presenting their Hispanic Heritage Month projects on Puerto Rico! I've uploaded the video to youtube, and you can see it in the post below.

I'm sure everyone is very excited that it's almost Halloween! We'll celebrate in school next Friday, October 25, with the Halloween Fun Fair. Students are welcome to wear costumes to school that day. We will also be decorating our ofrendas then. Please make sure that everyone brings in a shoebox (if they haven't already) and pictures or objects to place onto their altars. We will have a normal uniform day on October 31.

In math class, we have begun to take a weekly timed test on the multiplication tables. Every student started with the two's. If they passed, they'll take the test on the three's this week. If they don't pass, they'll need to write down the times tables for homework, then retake the test the following Friday. This will be almost every week, unless it is a week with lots of tests. For example, the next two weeks have quite a few end of the unit tests, so students will not need to take the times tables test.

Several units are winding down, so we have several tests in the next few weeks. On Tuesday, October 22, will be a religion test on the first three commandments and the covenant. On Friday, October 25, will be the science test on ecosystems and food chains. The following week, Wednesday, October 30 will be social studies, and Thursday, October 31, will be math.

Hispanic Heritage Month: Puerto Rico

October 4, 2013

We just started working on geometry in math, and the students are very excited! We explored polygons using geoboards on Wednesday (you can see some pictures above), then used the iPads to create a collage of places we see the different shapes in our lives and in our classroom. Yesterday, we talked about different kinds of angles and made an interactive notebook entry with moveable rays for the angles, and today we learned about different types of lines and how to name them. I warned the students they need to start studying flashcards if they haven't been already, since we're going to begin taking timed tests next week on Friday! Students will need to correctly answer problems from the 2's time tables. If they don't pass, they will have extra homework over the weekend. If they do pass, they will move on the 3's time tables the following week.

I also passed out a letter today about Day of the Dead and the project we are completing for it. Each student chooses one person to honor for this holiday. They will interview two people about their honoree, write a paragraph, and create an ofrenda for them. All the work (except for the interviews) will be done in class. I am sending home a letter about this and both interview sheets today. If you have any questions, or would like me to email you a copy, please contact me.

In the pictures above, you can also see students creating "seeds." We discussed how seeds are carried by wind, water, or clinging to animals' fur, and we talked about how engineers design, test, and then change their design to make it better! We designed the seeds on Monday and tested them, then discussed on Wednesday how to make them better. I'm happy to say that all the seeds did much better in the "being blown by the wind," "floating in water," and "clinging to an animal (felt)" tests on Wednesday.

Brush Creek Ranch

To anyone who went to Brush Creek Ranch with me this summer, here are my pictures!