Week 18

Student participating in bullying demonstration with local police officer

A student with Dave, the pretend student drawn on the paper in the background

We had another crazy, fun week!

Special Guests: We had great parent help this week.  Thank you so much!

We had a local police officer come talk to the class about bullying this week.  They “bullied” Dave, a giant kid made out of paper.  They said mean things to him and crumpled him up.  When he was uncrumpled, he didn’t ever look the same as he did before.  They said that bullying and being bullied makes others feel crumpled on the inside.

This week our star of the week brought in her albino hamster and pet dogs.  The kids loved being able to see them.   

Funny Stuff From Kids: When talking about pets, one students said, “I have a data fish.” (He meant beta fish.)

My wife is pregnant, and a few weeks ago I told the kids about how we would be having a baby in June.  One student is a little mixed up about what that means.  He drew a picture of me with a baby in my belly!

Homework: With the holidays, it has been difficult getting homework back.  Please make sure you get into a routine again with your child. 

Social Studies: We had fun learning about our country’s flag, and how it has changed over time.

Math: This week I retaught a previous unit.  The students didn’t do so well on the test last week, so I felt like they needed another week on it.  We focused on fact families and the relationship between addition and subtraction.  If 3+6=9, then the students should be able to figure out three more number sentences to go along with it (6+3=9, 9-3=6, and 9-6=3).

Project Read/Spelling: This week we focused more on blends.   We practiced reading more s blend words, and in particular we practiced with the sw blend (like swim).  The hardest blend was squ, as in squish. 

If students miss more than three words on their spelling test, they have to retake it.  This week no one had to retake the test!   

Speedy Words and Rocket Math: We had some great parent help with rocket math and speedy words this week.  Students are really learning. 

AR: Most students have reached their goal of 20 books for this quarter, and the rest are progressing.   Great job!  The quarter ends next week.

Writing: This week for writing we added the how/why triangle of our writing program.  These are words that tell how or why the subject of the sentence did whatever it is that they did.  Now students should be able to write things like, “Mr. Smith runs because he enjoys it” instead of just “Mr. Smith runs.”  Before this, students were trying to add things like that without making it a complete sentence, such as, “Because Mr. Smith enjoys running.”  We will continue working with this concept some more. . .Clear as mud, eh?

Science: For science this week we learned about how scientists invent things to solve problems.  We looked at pictures of the inside of common inventions (TV’s, copy machines, etc).  We talked about the history of stilts and how they have been used to solve problems.  Then the kids each got a turn walking on some stilts that I have made out of small buckets.