Handwriting, Math, and Insect Poems

Notice: Recognition Assembly tomorrow at 2 pm.

B.N., L.O., E.W., H.C. and M.T-B. are receiving awards. Please invite your parent to attend.

Our class is also playing the recorder at tomorrow's assembly.

Thank you to parents for donating these Spring Fair Gift Basket items. Let's fill the box!

On Tuesday mornings, the students' handwriting practice has evolved from practising letters and small words to handwriting their name and phrases. Today's phrase was from a poem we read later in the morning about an inchworm, "I inch, I arch, I march along." Students write the phrase 3x and their name 1x, followed by letter practise in their booklets until it is time for math (around 9:15).

In Math, students worked on unfinished homework from yesterday (please remember to finish unfinished work at home!), a new page showing the relationship between multiplication and division facts (see picture with the triangle), and some easy division questions.

After recess Ms. Koch came to help us with literature circles. She worked with 2 groups in the hallway (one group at a time), while I worked with the remaining students. Dividing the students into small groups and having another teacher for this time enables us to help more students one on one. Students love  the literacy games they play with her and (perhaps without them knowing) are learning and practising positive social skills. The groups change each week and students who don't spend time together are often put together during this time.



Figuring out the rhyme scheme in "The Inchworm"



By lunchtime, all students read, talked about, and completed activities on William Blake's "Tyger, Tyger," (yes, that is the way tiger was spelled in 1794), Valerie Worth's "dog" (yes, the title does not have a capital letter - a good lesson about the freedom of poetry and how it differs from short stories and novels), and 4 of Douglas Florian's poems from Insectlopedia, a collection of rhyming, rhythmic poems about insects.

We finished the morning by reading more from Love That Dog to find out what Jack (the speaker) thinks about the poems we studied this morning and his latest poetry assignment at school.

The morning flew by. Students were very engaged, interested, and excited about the material, which is contagious!

Mr. Wilson was at a meeting this afternoon and students had a TOC. They had Silent Reading, Music (recorder practise for tomorrow's assembly), and drama skits at the end of the day.

See you next Monday!

Mrs. Schneider