February 7, 2011

Today was a short but productive day.

Small group: We are talking about questioning this week. Not all questions are created equal. We are talking about 4 of the many kinds. They are catagorized by the way they are answered. Here are the four that we are talking about:

1. Answered Questions= means you can find the answer right in the text that you are reading.
2. Inference Questions= these are questions that can be answered by inferring the answer.
3. Back ground Questions= these are questions that can be answered because of something that you know or learned in your life.
4. Confused Questions= these are questions that you just do not know the answer to.

We will talk about these all week. Feel free to ask your child about these questions.

School Asssembly: Ballroom dance students got to dance for the school. Some of our students are in ballroom. They did a great job!
Spelling packet #20: bonus: Oklahoma and Phoenix

Math: We are a little ahead of our schedule so I decided to spend a week reviewing important concepts that they will need to know to do well on the next unit that is about measurement.
Today we reviewed adding and subtracting decimals. They have some homework on that.

Writing: In order to prepare for the DWA (the 5th grade state writing assessment that is at the end of this month) I am having the kids work on their typing skills. They will be doing these test on the computer and if they are slow with their typing, they will not do so well on the test. Please make sure they practice their typing skills every night for at least 15 minutes.

Mrs. Belletti is working with them in computers. Here are a few websites that she has suggested for us:

http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/keyboarding_games.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/typing/

Also, we had a 100 days celebration today. I gave the kids some oreos and twizzlers to celebrate during our class meeting. We also talked about not teasing others and saying "he/she likes you" etc.

HW:
Math: worksheet on decimal practice.
Writing: practice typing (links above)