Monday, October 25, 2010

Manic Monday...

Happy last week of October, folks!  Can you believe November starts one week from today?!?  WOW...Where has the time gone?!?  DO NOT FORGET that our "Hunger Heroes" food drive is still going on until THIS FRIDAY!  Also, BOO-grams are still being sold by the 5th graders every morning this week for $1.  Finally, our FALL PARTY is this FRIDAY at 1:30PM.  Please check out our last post to see the things we still need to make our party happen!

We began my favorite concept today...POETRY!!!  To introduce our concept, we discussed how poetry is very different from other styles of writing.  Poetry emphasizes your imagination...and there are NO boundaries!  I had the students close their eyes and gave them a scenario about being on a train with an open seat next to them.  Suddenly, someone sits down and he/she is very upset.  They then opened their eyes and finished the scenario in their Writer's Notebooks by deciding where they were going, who the person was that sat next to them, what he/she was upset about, and described what he/she looked like.  It was really great to hear where all the students' imaginations took them today!  I can't wait to see all the poems we will publish by the end of this unit...they're going to be G-R-E-A-T!!!


In reading, we completed our 'main idea' assessment with ORQ from last week.  Students also completed their solar system mobiles and comprehension (WOW word!) check questions from the end of "The Planets of our Solar System" text.  Tomorrow, we will begin our study of biographies and autobiographies.  I passed back our spelling tests from last week...Congrats to Lisa for getting our only 110%!!!  Also, congratulations to Ahmad, Peanut (Zach), Micah, Alyssa, and Hannah S. for also getting over 100%  WAY TO GO GUYS...YOU R-O-C-K!!! --->

Homework is working on your "Wordly Wise" spelling packet which is due Friday.  Study not only the words but the definitions of them and how to use each word in a sentence (context clues).  Have someone at home give you the definition and you spell the word and then switch by having him/ her give you the word and you recite the definition and a sentence using the word.  As I've told you, we've stepped up our spelling test game and as you may have realized last week, it is MUCH more difficult!  Our WOW Words this week are:

acceptance
excitement
autobiography
illustrator
comprehension

In math, we also had to complete an assessment from last Friday...it was a quiz with an ORQ over subtraction. A couple of students even earned a '4': Ahmad, Kristin, and Sophia R.!  The students who did not get finished will be doing it as independent practice in rotations tomorrow.  There is NO HOMEWORK in either math class (well, according to the students in Mrs. Ingold's class who I asked).

We earned a GREEN PAW in lunch today!!!  Woooo Hooo!!!
Again...
Our class switched to Mrs. Ingold for Social Studies and my Science class (Mrs. Ingold's homeroom) worked on Structures of organisms and their functions..specifically, plants.  We compared structures on our bodies to structures on the anatomy of plant to see similarities and differences.  The four main parts of a plant are the roots, stem, leaves, and flower as shown in the diagram below.  No homework in Science or Social Studies so enjoy your Monday evening...the LAST of OCTOBER!!! AHHHH!!!
I can't wait to see you tomorrow!
xoxo,
Mrs. Thomas

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