A Mini Update

I'm glad to hear that everyone made it through the Snowmageddon of 2011 (at least, that's what I'm calling it this year. It wasn't too bad though). As much as it pains me to say this, congratulations to all of you Packer fans out there on your Super Bowl win as well. That has got to feel good.

Back to school though!

This Friday, February 11, we will be going to the Sharon Lynne Wilson Center for the Arts to see a live play preformed for us about King Tut. This will include a talk-back with the actors and actresses, giving the kids a chance to ask about their profession and what it is like to be in live theater. Please make sure that students come to school that day with a bag lunch. They will be able to buy milk from the cafeteria, but that is it.

In social studies, students are finishing up their mapping unit by creating maps of their own. We have worked the past two weeks exploring city maps, political maps, physical maps, climate maps, time zone maps and adventuring through the features of Google Earth. The students are putting their knowledge to work now by creating their own maps. Some are creating fictional lands (Mackendoodle, Sarahtopia, Island of Sporta) and others are drawing on real places and getting creative with them (NBA Cities in the U.S., Italy and where they want to go). After we wrap up our mapping unit this week we will dive into ancient Greece.

Since we are looking at maps in social studies, why not look at graphics in math? Students are learning the in's and out's of bar graphs, line graphs, frequency tables, line plots, and histograms. Many students are taking surveys of their friends and learning how to display that information in these variety of ways. We are working with the students to make sure they include a title, labels, a key (if necessary), and of course, to avoid making them misleading in any way.

In reading, we are continuing to work on finding the theme of our stories as well as taking a closer look at character traits and how we can describe our characters. We are transferring this knowledge to our writing where students are beginning to create characters that have more depth to them in stories that have a specific theme.

This past week the students all had to complete an impromtu speech as well. Working on our communication skills, they selected a notecard with a topic on it, had a few minutes in the hallway to gather their thoughts and then came back into the class to give a two minute speech on it. They were recorded, so the kids were a bit nervous about that but I wanted them to get a little less shy about being on camera. It was a hard thing for the kids to do. However, they did very well and I was proud of them for delivering those speeches.

Conferences are coming up at the end of the month and the conference sign-up sheet will be going home soon. As always, this coincides with our book fair at school. Just something to keep in the back of your mind for the time being.

Stay warm, stay safe and I will see you all soon!