February 25th, 2009
Class activities for Wednesday, February 25
Spelling: We reviewed the Unit 7 spelling worksheet today.
Cursive: Ten cursive sentences, seven or more words each, are due Fridays.
Reading: Today was a discussion day in Literature Circles.
Writing: The persuasive letter to the editor project was introduced by discussing types of changes students would like to see in their class, school, city or country. Here are some sample questions students came up with:
- Should there be more sidewalks in Grand Blanc?
- Should students get to choose what they work on in art?
- Should Grand Blanc have a dog park?
- Should students have to walk from the buses at Anderson to McGrath?
- Should students be allowed to choose inside or outside recess?
Homework tonight is to write a question to write a letter about, similar to those above. The question should be fair and realistic.
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 with money today and students completed a MiniQuiz over this topic. Homework is to complete Math Boxes 4.5, started during the warm up this morning.
Science: None today due to completing the Student Satisfaction Survey.
Social Studies: None today due to library.
- Yellow magnets: 1
- Orange magnets: 0
- Red magnets: 0
- STAR Awards: 0
- Magnets moved this week (goal: 10): 2
- Hours with no yellow magnets (record: 58): 0
- Days with no orange magnets (record: 39; previous score: 25): 9
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.
- Sign up for Spring Conferences here.
