WOW, a new year has begun. Time to set some goals to reach and achieve for the coming year. I hope everyone is well rested and ready to begin anew. There are many new challenges that lie ahead for the next few months. We will continue to attack and successfully work through some MCAS ELA and MAth samples from previous years. We will be reading a biography book, create a project/report to go with it, and setup a living “Wax Museum” display to showcase or historic person. Thanks to Mrs. Perry’s investigation, we will be creating and publishing our own stories. We will begin soon. I need to gather a few more details from her. My class did this last year and wrote 15 -20 page stories on surviving on an island. We will try to come up with something exciting to write about this year.

Spelling: We will be working on pages from our workbooks, from the story :Heat WAve” We are back to the regular list of bonus words. The children are either on list #1, #2, 0r #3.

Reading: We are going to try to warm ourselves up with a story from our anthology titled “Heat Wave”

Written Language: We will be working through a new MCAS story packet this week. The story is on a portion of ALice in Wonderland. We will be doing this story in class.

Math: We will be continuing with multiplication. I will be reviewing many different ways to solve a given equation. We will be tying in many different word problems and work through them. (too much information, not enough information, multi-stepped, and $) All of the problems will have some element of multiplication in them.

All our math concepts, will not be taught in isolation. Everything in math builds on the previous day or concept. That is why it is still imperative to stay focused and participate.

DCR UPDATE: This is an independent math packet that reviews all the concepts and skills we will be using throughout the year. The children should be pacing themselves, 3-5 pages per week. I give them a weekly check on the board and they should be on pages 49 - 70 (book #2) as of Friday 12/19/08. There are 3 packets, one for each term. I am pleased to announce that 10 children have completed Book #1. I have instructed them to go back and fix all their errors before I will give them DCR #2. I am so excited. We are starting to develop great work habits.

Science: We continue with our new unit on Electricity & Magnets. I love working with electricity and magnets. I know, it is shocking that I like it. LOL Before vacation, the children made simple simple circuits using a battery, a bulb, and one wire. Everyone eventually got the bulb to light up. Again, shocking! LOL
We will be creating series and parallel circuits this week.

Social Studies: We are ready to begin the next region of the USA, The Midwest. We will fill in the map this week and begin reading and learning about the climate, landforms, and the resources and industries this week.


Thanks, Mr. L.