This week has been a busy one! Our fourth years had an assembly about weather. All of us are about to embark on our first field trip to learn about our country at the time of the Constitution. Our fifth and sixth years had express lessons in writing and now have a daily journal writing assignment on their Google drive. All students are continuing their brilliant work in rounding, squaring, multiplication, parts of speech, sentence building and vocabulary. They worked on North American Tribe Maps this week, too; they can find a pdf of it on the pdf page if they didn’t finish! A few very key works I’d like you to help your student with are described below.
Vocabulary: Particular vocabulary words are listed on the board each week. Fifteen words total. Students need vocabulary development for their writing, their math reasoning and understanding and many other aspects of their educational career. Thus, the lists of vocabulary words have been built with this in mind. Here is last week’s list and the first steps. Please check that your student has done last week’s vocabulary work. This week’s words will be posted Friday afternoon. It will be homework for those who don’t complete it by Friday.
Spelling is currently a blend of sight words and the vocabulary words from lessons. It occurs during their handwriting time on Thursdays. Students are asked to use the handwriting or cursive they are practicing throughout the week to complete a spelling assessment. Students are provided a list of both the sight words and the vocabulary to work with through the week with a variety of activities. Ask your student about it and how they are doing in it.
Imagine Learning is a new tool our school is using to improve our math reasoning and skills. Please visit our new blog page to learn how to access it and use it each day with your student.
Skill-building work is what I call homework. It can take between 20 and 40 minutes, but really no longer. We want students to concentrate their world and home learning when out of the classroom. So, 20 minutes in a math area and 20 in reading/ writing is sufficient unless another personal arrangement has been made.
Home Projects are due October 3rd! The full write-up is located here AND can be found in our PDFs/Documents page. We have been speaking about how the early people of the Americas lived, worked, and what their lives were like. The next big thing is a deeper understanding through personal study. The paper copy of this project will come home tomorrow, Thursday, after a brief discussion of its expectations.
Lastly, today we had a “mock day ” enactment during our afternoon work cycle. We showed that we know and understand the expectations of the classroom and how to fulfill them. We talked about respect and what it is. Students said, “the Golden Rule, kindness, listening” and more. We also talked about responsibility and what it means, and how it includes doing what is right because it influences other people and things. Then, we talked about rules and how they protect us from chaos and pain, how they are not there to hurt us and keep us from fun but actually make the fun possible. In our case, the fun of learning. It turned out to be a beautiful discussion and I look forward to seeing the students produce a thriving, learning community. See you all Friday morning at 8:10 for our field trip!
CHECK OUT OUR STUDENT BLOGGERS ON THE STUDENT BLOG PAGE, STARTING THIS WEEK!