Friday in Room 403

I want to thank the parents who showed up last night for our Open School Night.  It was nice making connections and starting this journey of working together to ensure that your children progress this year.

Parents:  We are 3 weeks into school and some of your children have already missed 3-4 days of school.  I will say it again, the only way I can teach your children is if they are at school, ready to learn.  If they are not here, they can't learn.   School starts at 8AM and your child should be here.  Excuses are not acceptable.

Class 502:

• We started the day with Breakfast.  Then we did our Daily Reading Comprehension Timed Quiz.  They have five minutes to read 3 paragraphs and answer 4 questions.  We do this each day and it to build stamina and speed for the state test.  We then go over the quiz and make sure they understand why they missed the questions they missed to take it from a quiz to a learning opportunity.
• Then we reviewed last night's writing homework.  Since only about 3 students did it, I modeled how to do it and the students were given 15-20 minutes to "fix" their homework.  The task was simple.. using our class novel as a model, write an INTRODUCTION to a story where they introduce and describe their main character, they describe the setting, and introduce the "PROBLEM" the character is facing. 
• After that, we continued the writing theme and reviewed what they did right and what they did wrong with the Winter Wishes letters we wrote last week.  I modeled what a letter should look like and again gave them 15-20 minutes to work on them.
• We passed out the Social Studies books and did a book tour of the text so they could get an idea of what the year would look like.  Our focus is on the Northern Hemisphere.  We will have units on the United States (NY), Canada, South America (Brazil), and a smaller island nation.  
• After doing the book tour and talking about the year, we looked at Unit 1, Chapter 1, Section 1.  It was titled "Our Hemisphere" and we took turns reading around the room.  

Class 501:

• First we did our Daily Reading Comprehension Timed Quiz.  
• Then we reviewed last night's writing homework.  Since only about 3 students did it, I modeled how to do it and the students were given 15-20 minutes to "fix" their homework.  The task was simple.. using our class novel as a model, write an INTRODUCTION to a story where they introduce and describe their main character, they describe the setting, and introduce the "PROBLEM" the character is facing. 
• I collected RRJ's and only about 1/2 the students turned them in.  It seems that students are not reading nightly.   I guess I will have to start making phone calls home and finding out why.
• Next we passed out the Social Studies books and did a book tour of the text so they could get an idea of what the year would look like.  Our focus is on the Northern Hemisphere.  We will have units on the United States (NY), Canada, South America (Brazil), and a smaller island nation.  After doing the book tour and talking about the year, we looked at Unit 1, Chapter 1, Section 1.  It was titled "Our Hemisphere" and we took turns reading around the room.  
• We watched a couple interactive videos on Pangea and on swimming between the plates to let the students visualize that entire continents MOVE about 2-3 inches a year and sometimes with dramatic effects.
• I then passed out an activity on Pangea.  We read what it was and discussed how the earth has changed over the last 250 million years.  We talked about plate movement and how it creates earthquakes, mountains, and other interesting facts about plate movement.
• Then students then got scissors and started cutting out continents to try and puzzle piece them together to try and figure out what the earth used to look like before the plates moved. 

Homework

• Literacy:
• The Supreme Court Reading Comprehension Quiz
• Read for 30-45 minutes and write summary/reflection in RRJ
• Math 
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