MrHowd.com

Spelling: None today.

Cursive: Cursive pages 43-45 are available and due on Friday.

Reading: Today was a reading skills and AR practice day. We also had art during our reading time.

Writing: Students used a tool called Grammarly to help them edit their adventure story.

Our current writing project is a Choose Your Own Adventure fiction gamebook. Students are writing a fiction adventure story with choices that the reader can make. Each choice can change how the story turns out. Students will publish their adventure as a website at sites.mrhowd.com. See below for more details.

This project is due Tuesday, January 26. Students should revising and editing at this point; we’ve talked in class about writing at least seven pages. Homework is to work on writing for at least 15 minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure Resources

• See examples of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction websites here and here.
• Here are some good student examples:
  • William’s Roanoke Adventure
  • Abel’s Aztec Terror
  • Katie’s Lost Statue hunt
  • Nancy’s Under Water Adventure!
• Look at an Underground Railroad Choose Your Own Adventure website.
• Look through some Interactive History Adventure books (hint: search for “the end” to see some of the endings of the book).
• Look at some examples of different kinds of endings in a Choose Your Own Adventure Story.
• Play Zork, a text-based computer game. Here is a list of commands and directions. Here is a map of the dungeon if you get stuck or lost.
• Play Oregon Trail, another text-based computer game.
• Find a complete list of resources here.

Math: Students worked on STAR Math tests today.

Homework is to practice MobyMax Math or Khan Academy for at least 15 minutes.

Science: None today due to our reading skills practice time.

Social Studies: We read an article about the changing economy in Texas due to the oil price crash. We also started reading a story about how ghost town of Rhyolite, Nevada, was caused by the boom and bust of gold mines.

Notes:

• Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
• Visit our Links page: keep track of all the websites we use for learning, or try something new.
• View grades, assignments, and attendance at ParentVue or StudentVue.

Our Mission:
All students in Room 130 will do their best and get ready for 5th grade.

Spelling: Today was the school spelling bee. Congratulations to Skylar and Connor for representing our class!

Cursive: Cursive pages 43-45 are available and due on Friday.

Reading: Today was a reading day in Literature Circles; some groups worked on summarizing and questionning as reading strategies.

Writing: Students completed revising conferences today.

Our current writing project is a Choose Your Own Adventure fiction gamebook. Students are writing a fiction adventure story with choices that the reader can make. Each choice can change how the story turns out. Students will publish their adventure as a website at sites.mrhowd.com. See below for more details.

This project is due Tuesday, January 26. Students should drafting at this point and nearing the end of their story. Get some ideas below or right here. Homework is to work on writing for at least 15 minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure Resources

• See examples of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction websites here and here.
• Here are some good student examples:
  • William’s Roanoke Adventure
  • Abel’s Aztec Terror
  • Katie’s Lost Statue hunt
  • Nancy’s Under Water Adventure!
• Look at an Underground Railroad Choose Your Own Adventure website.
• Look through some Interactive History Adventure books (hint: search for “the end” to see some of the endings of the book).
• Look at some examples of different kinds of endings in a Choose Your Own Adventure Story.
• Play Zork, a text-based computer game. Here is a list of commands and directions. Here is a map of the dungeon if you get stuck or lost.
• Play Oregon Trail, another text-based computer game.
• Find a complete list of resources here.

Math: We practiced the standard method of multiplication today. Students started working on multiplication skills at Khan Academy.

Homework is to practice MobyMax Math or Khan Academy for at least 15 minutes.

Science: Students completed a MiniQuiz about states of matter and we had a dental health lesson from Mott Children’s Health Center.

Social Studies: None today due to our reading skills and AR practice time.

Notes:

• Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
• Visit our Links page: keep track of all the websites we use for learning, or try something new.
• View grades, assignments, and attendance at ParentVue or StudentVue.

Our Mission:
All students in Room 130 will do their best and get ready for 5th grade.

Spelling: None today.

Cursive: Cursive pages 43-45 are available and due on Friday.

Reading: Today was a discussion day in Literature Circles. Students also received their latest STAR Reading level. Our class average is below:

As you can see, our class is having trouble gaining traction with our reading level this year. Our goal is to get to 5.4, and we are quite a ways from that. We talked today about how each person in our class matters to our class goal. To prove this, I change one person’s score, and just one change made the dot on our graph move. Everyone matters. We need everyone to try their best. We had some people take only 15 minutes to complete their test, which is about 30 seconds per question. That’s not a lot of thinking time, and their scores

Everyone matters. We need everyone to try their best. We had some people take only 15 minutes to complete their test, which is about 30 seconds per question. That’s not a lot of thinking time, and their scores showed it.

We talked about how we could get back to improving our reading level. The class suggested to take our time, to concentrate better on tests, to focus more on reading during Literature Circles, and to reading 20 minutes a night. Samantha had the idea of having a reading log to track reading at home. I’m not usually a fan of reading logs because it bogs down something that is supposed to be fun. But we discussed a simple reading log that will result in team points. This reading log will also have some contests involved with seeing how many days in a row a student can read at home, and how many mini-streaks a student can achieve. It’s called Don’t Break the Chain, and we’ll see if it encourages more students to try reading at home.

Writing: We looked at some examples of different kinds of endings in adventure stories today.

Our current writing project is a Choose Your Own Adventure fiction gamebook. Students are writing a fiction adventure story with choices that the reader can make. Each choice can change how the story turns out. Students will publish their adventure as a website at sites.mrhowd.com. See below for more details.

This project is due Tuesday, January 26. Students should drafting at this point and nearing the end of their story. Get some ideas below or right here. Homework is to work on writing for at least 15 minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure Resources

• See examples of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction websites here and here.
• Here are some good student examples:
  • William’s Roanoke Adventure
  • Abel’s Aztec Terror
  • Katie’s Lost Statue hunt
  • Nancy’s Under Water Adventure!
• Look at an Underground Railroad Choose Your Own Adventure website.
• Look through some Interactive History Adventure books (hint: search for “the end” to see some of the endings of the book).
• Look at some examples of different kinds of endings in a Choose Your Own Adventure Story.
• Play Zork, a text-based computer game. Here is a list of commands and directions. Here is a map of the dungeon if you get stuck or lost.
• Play Oregon Trail, another text-based computer game.
• Find a complete list of resources here.

Math: We practiced the partial products method of multiplication today, and students continued to practice multiplication skills at MobyMax.

Homework is to practice MobyMax Math or Khan Academy for at least 15 minutes.

Science: None today. We’ll have a MiniQuiz about states of matter tomorrow.

Social Studies: None today.

Notes:

• Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
• Visit our Links page: keep track of all the websites we use for learning, or try something new.
• View grades, assignments, and attendance at ParentVue or StudentVue.

Our Mission:
All students in Room 130 will do their best and get ready for 5th grade.

Spelling: None today.

Cursive: Cursive pages 40-42 are available and due on Friday.

Reading: Students worked on AR tests or informational reading skills today.

Writing: We talked about developing the inner story today. That’s a characters thoughts or feelings that come out in how the characters acts or what they say.

Our current writing project is a Choose Your Own Adventure fiction gamebook. Students are writing a fiction adventure story with choices that the reader can make. Each choice can change how the story turns out. Students will publish their adventure as a website at sites.mrhowd.com. See below for more details.

This project is due Friday, January 22. Students should drafting at this point and nearing the end of their story. Get some ideas below or right here. Homework is to work on writing for at least 15 minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure Resources

• See examples of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction websites here and here.
• Here are some good student examples:
  • William’s Roanoke Adventure
  • Abel’s Aztec Terror
  • Katie’s Lost Statue hunt
  • Nancy’s Under Water Adventure!
• Look at an Underground Railroad Choose Your Own Adventure website.
• Look through some Interactive History Adventure books (hint: search for “the end” to see some of the endings of the book).
• Look at some examples of different kinds of endings in a Choose Your Own Adventure Story.
• Play Zork, a text-based computer game. Here is a list of commands and directions. Here is a map of the dungeon if you get stuck or lost.
• Play Oregon Trail, another text-based computer game.
• Find a complete list of resources here.

Math: Students continued to practice multiplication skills at MobyMax, many by breaking apart large numbers or by using partial products.

Homework is to practice MobyMax Math or Khan Academy for at least 15 minutes.

Science: We reviewed the last experiment about the differences between a solid, liquid, and a gas. We’ll have a MiniQuiz about this topic next week.

Social Studies: We learned about how an economy can grow or shrink from changes in technology, resources, or competition. We looked at an example of Michigan copper mines competing with Arizona copper mines.

Notes:

• Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
• Visit our Links page: keep track of all the websites we use for learning, or try something new.
• View grades, assignments, and attendance at ParentVue or StudentVue.

Our Mission:
All students in Room 130 will do their best and get ready for 5th grade.

Spelling: We reviewed common digraphs today, which are two letters that combine to form a new sound: ch, sh, th, wh, ph.

Cursive: Cursive pages 40-42 are available and due on Friday.

Reading: Students completed a STAR Reading test today.

Writing: Our current writing project is a Choose Your Own Adventure fiction gamebook. Students are writing a fiction adventure story with choices that the reader can make. Each choice can change how the story turns out. Students will publish their adventure as a website at sites.mrhowd.com. See below for more details.

This project is due Friday, January 22. Students should drafting at this point and nearing the end of their story. Get some ideas below or right here. Homework is to work on writing for at least 15 minutes.

Choose Your Own Adventure Resources

• See examples of Choose Your Own Adventure fiction websites here and here.
• Here are some good student examples:
  • William’s Roanoke Adventure
  • Abel’s Aztec Terror
  • Katie’s Lost Statue hunt
  • Nancy’s Under Water Adventure!
• Look at an Underground Railroad Choose Your Own Adventure website.
• Look through the Underground Railroad Interactive History Adventure book (hint: search for “the end” to see some of the endings of the book).
• Look at some examples of different kinds of endings in a Choose Your Own Adventure Story.
• View the titles of all the Choose Your Own Adventure books to get adventure topic ideas.
• Play Zork, a text-based computer game. Here is a list of commands and directions. Here is a map of the dungeon if you get stuck or lost.
• Play Oregon Trail, another text-based computer game.
• Find a complete list of resources here.

Math: We practiced using rounding to estimate products and check if an answer is reasonable. Students also used MobyMax Math to practice multiplication skills.

Homework is to practice MobyMax Math or Khan Academy for at least 15 minutes.

Science: Students completed an experiment today testing the differences between a solid, liquid, and a gas. Homework is to finish the 3 Balloons experiment if not done in class.

Social Studies: None today due to our reading skills and AR practice time.

Notes:

• Check out our class calendar to stay up-to-date.
• Visit our Links page: keep track of all the websites we use for learning, or try something new.
• View grades, assignments, and attendance at ParentVue or StudentVue.

Our Mission:
All students in Room 130 will do their best and get ready for 5th grade.