March 7th Update

It's hard to believe it, but as of the end of today, we are officially at the end of the 2nd trimester of the school year!  I guess what they say is true, time flies when you're having fun, and I think that we are having a ton of fun learning in room 14 this year.

This week we finished up Unit 7 in math which has been focusing on converting measurements in
both the customary and metric system, as well as looking at negative integers on the number line.  We will do our unit review on Monday and take the unit test on Tuesday.  Our next unit will focus on fractions and mixed numbers.  Just a reminder to our math stations volunteers; our next math stations will be on Friday, March 21st since we will be on a field trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium on the 28th.

In reading we have continued to read our new book, Island of the Blue Dolphins .  We even went to an assembly on Tuesday with the same title expecting it to be about the book but it turns out it was about sea exploration near the real Island of the Blue Dolphins off the coast of Southern California.  It was very neat for students to see what the area described in the story looks like from a marine biologist's point of view. 

In writing I finally finished reading the first response to literature that students wrote in class.  I allowed time for them to look back at their writing to see what comments were made and what areas they need to improve on for the next assignment.  We also started the next response to literature.  We read the Chinese folktale, "The Jade Paintbrush", and next week students will begin to plan out and write their rough drafts.  They will be focusing their responses on what lesson the author wanted the reader to learn from the story.

We continued with our Too For Drugs unit this week with a lesson on using I-messages when students have a conflict with a friend.  There is a handout in the Friday Folder that explains this more for you.

In social studies we are finally about finished with unit 2.  We will wrap up the last lesson on Monday and will spend time reviewing the unit on Monday and Tuesday.  The unit 2 test will be on Wednesday afternoon.  I gave students a study guide today that they can use to help them prepare for the test.  We will be going over the study guide on Monday and Tuesday.  We will be moving onto our next unit in social studies which will be on the California Gold Rush.  We are also still working on our mission reports this month.  Next week, I hope to take the class into the lab (or bring the lab to us by bringing in the laptop cart) so that students can continue their research as well as begin working on their Google doc slide show with their partner and their brochures. 

Students took the Magnetism and Electricity science unit test this week and over all they did a great job.  Their tests can be found in their Friday Folders.  I collected their science notebooks and will be grading them next week and hope to be able to return them by the end of the week.  We will be starting out next science unit, Environments, in a couple of weeks.