September 22, 2014

I handed out books to students last week that we will be reading in guided reading groups for about the next five weeks. Students have all been assigned a book, either Frindle, Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, Fudge-a-Mania, or Tiger Rising. We will be meeting two to three times a week in small groups to discuss the books, while working on visualizing, making connections, and asking questions. Students do have time to read the section that is due in class, but if they do not finish, they should read the book at home. This can count towards their reading log. I also wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who ordered from Scholastic! I'm glad the students will have books at home to read, and I was able to buy over thirty new books for our classroom library, too.

I was very impressed with the stories students handed in last week! We began writing a new story this week inspired by the book The Hundred Penny Box. Students made a timeline of their life and then chose three important events to write about. We're talking about how to show that something happened instead of just telling the reader it happened and other ways to add details to stories.

In social studies, we're studying economics. Each student is choosing a business idea, such as selling cookies or dog walking, and writing a business plan for this idea. They'll have to figure out their investors, profit, and resources they'll need for the business. So far, they've been great! We did a fun experiment on Friday about supply and demand. Students could see how the price of Sour Candy Kids (the most popular candy) rose because more people wanted to buy it, but then after several rounds of it becoming more expensive, demand changed and less people wanted to pay the new price.

We have a few tests coming up. This Thursday, September 25, we have a science test on classifying organisms, especially animals. We'll have a test soon in math, too, on using estimation to solve problems. This will probably be on October 6. As a reminder, we have no school on Friday since it's a teacher professional development day. That means our vocabulary test and times tables test will both be on Thursday. I am also sending home progress reports on Thursday instead of responsibility reports. After receiving the progress report, if anyone would like to meet to discuss your child, please just let me know!

Finally, we have our first field trip coming up! The Lyric Opera is performing an opera that was written just for students called "The Brothers Grimm." We'll be going to see it at Lane Tech on Monday, October 6. I'll send home that permission slip later on this week. Students each received a booklet with information about the opera last week, and we'll be doing a few activities to prepare for the trip.