Read One, Win One

We have a contest going on in our classroom...it's called Read One, Win One!  For the month of November the children have the chance to write a summary for any book they read in school or at home and enter the summary into our Read One, Win One box.  Each summary is an entry to win a book and some other miscellaneous prizes.  And...bonus...the more entries a student puts into the box, the better they will become at writing summaries!

Entry forms are available in our classroom, and I'm working on getting the forms uploaded onto my teacher webpage.  Hopefully that will be available soon!

Keep reading...and summarizing!!!!

What We've Been Up To...

Math- We have come to the end of our Engage New York module on Multiplication and Division.  Our final lesson involved solving two step word problems involving all four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by using the Read, Draw, Write method.  The children worked in small groups to solve one such problem and to create a poster with their solutions.  They then used their posters and taught the rest of the class how to solve the problem. Their posters are hanging up in the hallway outside the classroom- take a look when you come in for Parent-Teacher conferences!

              

We will be reviewing the module on Monday and then our end-of-module assessment will be on Wednesday.  We will then move into our Math in Focus textbook and workbook to work a little bit more on multiplication.  

Social Studies and Writing- We've been continuing to work on our nonfiction writing project on Australian animals.  Some of the skills we've been working on related to this project are highlighting important information, note-taking, turning notes into coherent sentences, and writing a topic sentence.  

Science- We are still working with the Rocks and Minerals kit.  The children performed two more tests on their set of minerals and recorded the results of those tests.  They observed the luster of each mineral and recorded whether each mineral was metallic, glassy, waxy, or dull.  They also tested the hardness of each mineral by trying to scratch each of the minerals with a penny and a steel nail and recorded whether the mineral was soft (scratched by the penny), medium (not scratched by the penny, but scratched by the nail), or hard (not scratched by either the penny or the nail).  

Reading- We've been continuing to examine types of Folk Tales- myths, fairy tales, and fables.  The children have a chart in their reading notebooks on which they've taken notes on the characteristics of each type of story.  As I've read examples of each type of story to them the children have used their notes to identify the specific type of story.  

We had a great Halloween party.  Thanks to everyone who sent in snacks and/or stopped in to help us celebrate.  Don't forget about Parent-Teacher Conferences this Tuesday from noon until 7:00 pm.  I'm looking forward to meeting with each of you!