Spelling, Questions, and Self-Portraits

Today was my first full day with the class and it is a pleasure getting to know all 25 of them. I have met a few families already and look forward to meeting more. If you have any questions, please email or stop in before or after school. I’m teaching the class on Mondays (all day) and Tuesday mornings.

This morning the students wrote about their skills and talents, to help me get to know them better and to assess how to help them improve their writing. After writing, they took a spelling test where the words increased in difficulty. Students stopped whenever they felt they could not attempt to spell the words anymore. The results help us place the students in spelling groups that are appropriate for their level of spelling so that their weekly list words are neither too easy nor much too difficult for them.

On Mondays and Tuesdays I will read aloud from a novel that ties in with one of our units. Students may draw while listening if they want to. Today we started Gordon Korman’s Island trilogy. The first book Shipwreck ties in with the Science unit on Weather that we started today. 

Everyone who asks questions is a scientist because we want to find answers. Today we practiced being scientists by asking questions about natural items within a group of 4-5, and then brainstormed and wrote questions about our Weather unit. Hopefully the students will be able to answer their classmates’ questions by the end of our unit.

After lunch was silent reading, then the students made self-portrait magnets for our white board. Despite some students’ nervousness about their ability to draw, with encouragement and a little instruction, their portraits look fantastic. Here is a picture of the ones that are finished.

We ended the day with Benchball in the Gym, which appears to already be a favourite game.

Mrs. Schneider