February 23rd, 2009
Class activities for Monday, February 23
Spelling: None today due to creating class goals for tracking missing assignments and completed work.
Cursive: Ten cursive sentences, seven or more words each, are due Fridays.
Reading: Today was a discussion day in Literature Circles. Some groups worked on chunking and context clues as reading strategies.
Writing: We continued to write notes about Core Democratic Values today.
Our next piece with be a persuasive letter to the editor about a topic chosen by each student. Here’s an overview of the project, and here’s a checklist to help with writing the letter. This piece will be due March 6.
The piece after that will be our final fiction project of the year. Students will write a novel. You read that right. Each student will write their own novel, with a word goal minimum of 1,500-3,000 words, based on their reading level (each student’s minimum writing goal is equal to their reading level multiplied by 500). The novels will be written in Google Docs (docs.mrhowd.com) to make use of the word count feature. Final novels will be uploaded to lulu.com and published as paperback books, which can be purchased for reasonable prices. So yes, students will actually write and publish their own novels. This project is based on the National Novel Writing Month Young Writers program. Complete details will follow soon. Students were asked today to start thinking about their novel topic, characters, plot and setting. With the average fourth grader needing to write about 133 words each school day, students will need to start this project by “hitting the ground running.”
Math: We reviewed decimal addition and subtraction today. Homework is to complete the decimal addition and subtraction worksheet, if not done in class.
Science: Students made a circuit with a switch and a motor, and used the switches to make opened and closed circuits. We also learned how to draw schematic diagrams. Homework is to complete the circuit drawings and response sheet, if not done in class.
Social Studies: We learned that slaves may have used secret messages coded into quilt squares to communicate on the Underground Railroad. View the presentation below:
Homework is to plan the color design of a quilt square handed out in class.
- Yellow magnets: 0
- Orange magnets: 0
- Red magnets: 0
- STAR Awards: 0
- Magnets moved this week (goal: 10): 0
- Hours with no yellow magnets (record: 58): 10
- Days with no orange magnets (record: 39; previous score: 25): 3
Check your student’s Personal and Social Growth grade at SnapGrades to see if your student moved their magnet.
Notes:
- View grades, assignments, attendance and even the report card at SnapGrades.
- Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
- This week’s juice volunteers: Abigail and Kayla L.
