Rielynn's Voki Talks About Space Hygiene

Neptune Moose

 We read a science fiction selection about a husband and wife team that spent 13 years in space flying to Neptune and back.  This had Konner thinking about what Neptune is like.  Here's what he found out:
 

How Many States Have You Been To?

We are reviewing methods for organizing data in math. Students have collected data on the number of states they've been in. After organizing the data, we will review common landmarks (minimum, maximum, range, mode, median, and mean). Once our data is collected, we will put the results on the blog, so stay tuned....

In literacy, we're reading our last story about space. It is a science fiction story set in 2152-2154. We continue to discuss how good readers ask and answer questions before, during, and after reading. Today we spent 10 minutes asking questions about three sentences we read. Those sentences were:  Voyager 2 followed this same route 175 years ago. But spaceships are much faster today. So we'll be back on Earth in just 12 years.  Amazing how three little sentences can lead to many things to discuss.

A picture of a scene from The Color of Justice, the play we will be seeing on Friday.

Field trip tomorrow!  We are going to see The Color of Justice at the Gallagher Bluedorn.  It is a play set in the 1950s and is about citizenship, fairness and respect.  

Have a Great Four Day Weekend!

This has been a crazy week at school. Blabberize. The Social Studies/Literacy play. Conferences. Book It Celebration. We all need a four day weekend to recover from all the work we did and the fun we had! Enjoy!

Those of you who did not finish your math tests can still study over the weekend. If you need to finish your simile projects, you can do that too! Otherwise, NO HOMEWORK.

It would be wonderful if you read everyday though! Remember, you do have the February Book It!

Spelling Practice for Unit 4 Week 4 List and Math Practice Games

Click HERE if you want to go to a link where you can practice our spelling list by playing fun games online.


Looking for a way to practice turning mixed numbers into improper fractions? Click HERE! or HERE!

Next Inquiry Project---Have Your Voki Tell What You've Learned!

Study Reading Vocabulary Words for Unit 4

Click on this link to study our Unit 4 Vocabulary words!
http://s.tudy.it/twmyy6

Crazy Friday

The Sun

Proxima Centauri

Today we did not have math because the guidance counselor met with the classes during math time.  We will work hard to finish our fraction unit up by next Thursday.

In literacy we worked on Simile projects.  We also read the rest of the story Twins, which was very interesting.  The students learned a lot of facts about stars.  Ask your child to give you a fact or two.  If you want to ask him/her a question about what we learned, you can ask some of the following:
How long it would take to get to the sun if you were driving in a car.
Answer:  177 years.

What's the name of the next closest star?
Answer:  Proxima Centauri.

If you consider the distance from the Earth to the Sun as one giant step, how many steps would it take to get to Proxima Centauri?
Answer:  300,000.  Yep, that's not a typo!

Flashcards and More!

This week's vocabulary words and meanings in a tagxedo picture.

Literacy
First of all, I want to let you know that students can study the vocabulary for Unit 4 Week 3 by practicing the flashcards at the following link.   http://www.flashcardmachine.com/1819342/f3p5
They do not need to know the exact definition of the word, however, they should know what the word means and how to pronounce the word.

Also, I've sent home fluency passages for kids to practice.  This week's passage is in the form of a skit.

We were very busy in literacy today, and we even found time for library!  While some of the students celebrated a birthday in their homeroom, the rest of us classified spelling words as nouns or adjectives.  This is such a difficult concept.  We will keep working on it.   Speaking of spelling, students have a spelling worksheet to do for homework tonight.  It is a passage in which some of the spelling words are written incorrectly, and they must correct them.  I've attached another spelling list to the words just in case.

Tomorrow we will start reading a new story called Twins, and I will send it home so students can reread it and fill in a graphic organizer with facts they learn from the story.  The story can also be read online if you click on the Lead 21 link (found in the right hand column) and login with the student's username and password.  The password for each student is read. 

We took 15 minutes to do a Making Words lesson today.  Making Words is when I choose a big word and we spell words that can be made from the letters in that big word.  Students have all the letters in front of them and they use my clues to arrange the letters to make the words.  They write the words on a sheet and then use words we've made to help them spell additional words.


For example, our big word today was the superlative BRIGHTEST.  Remember last week when we worked on comparatives and superlatives?  Anyway the students used the letters to spell the following words: hit, sit, site, hire, tire, tight, sight, right, bright, bitter, hitter, sitter, tighter, and then the big word, brightest.

Tomorrow we will focus on sorting and transferring the homophones, related words and rhyming patterns. 

• We will sort for homophones (site and sight) and for related words (bright/brightest, tight/tighter, hit/hitter, sit/sitter).  We will discuss the relationship between these words and the spelling changes that occur when writing related words.

• We will sort for rhymes. (sight/tight/right/bright, tire/hire, hit/sit, hitter/sitter/bitter)

• And then we will transfer the related words and rhyming patterns by spelling new words. (lightest, kinder, batter  and wire, slight, glitter, and critter.)

I will send a blank sheet home tomorrow for students to work on making words out of the big word brightest.  This will reinforce the lesson.  Feel free to help and use the words I listed above if you get stuck.


The students also worked on their Simile Writing project.  I think you will enjoy seeing them when they are done, especially since they are writing things about their family.  :)

Math
We worked on making circle graphs using the percent circle on our math templates.  We then looked at the graphs to make sure that they made sense.  For example, did 27% look like just a tad more than 1/4 of the circle?  Was 46% close to half of the circle?  As I stated in the homework section on the right, students can check their homework tonight (Study Link 5.11) by clicking on the Fraction Practice tab and inputting the data in their problem into the Make A Circle Graph website.  They will be able to compare their graph with the one the computer makes.


Have a good night!