Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016

Welcome back after a long weekend,

We had a super morning this morning – everyone was happy to be back at school after their long weekend!  We did some Read to Self to start out and to get our book choices and journals updated.  Following our reading time we did a turn and talk with a partner to demonstrate our understanding.  I am very pleased with their ability to talk about their books as well as their willingness to share. 

Next we pulled out our Words Their Way work and reacquainted ourselves with our word families.  We will continue to work with these words until our quiz on Friday.  Please be sure to review at home and to utilize spellingcity.com as a fun way to practice.

The last round of Daily 5 was a student choice  and Mrs. Zwack worked with a guided reading group.  We needed a few reminders about voice levels at one point and we encourage everyone to remember their manners and the expectations for Daily 5

After snack and read aloud and a quick movement break, we met with Mr. Dadani who is our connection to Tanga.  He shared his presentation of the school there and how we have supported their learning.  We are very excited to start our project next week! 

Please check out Twitter today, we tweeted a lot today about our learning and experiences.  In music, Mrs. Jones collected our pre-recorder orders.  Grade fours check your at home to make sure it is working.  If not please order a new one. Mrs. Jones will need to have all orders in by Thursday's music class.  

In math we revisited our Math Writing. We created an "I" chart - it is an I-chart because this activity is to be done "independently."  We talked about how Math Writing helps us to communicate our thinking, build our stamina, share our thinking, learn more math, and it is fun!  We have decided that we need to complete one "Problem of a Week" each week. Other Math Writing Activities are "Today's Number" and "Problem of the Day."  We will practice more of these tomorrow.

In our science inquiry,  we were able to share our water filtration systems.  We talked about what worked well with each system and what would they change to improve the design.  We will work with the engineers about how we can add these systems into our structural designs.

In gym, we continued our work on fitness.  We had some new stations today and we worked with partners at the sentence. Today we documented how we did and if we met our personal goals.

We did our plank challenge at the end of the day. Wow are we getting great!  We were able to hold our plank for 45 seconds. 

Things to Remember:

1.) Pre-Reccorder Orders are DUE THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4th

2.)  Tomorrow is Winter Walk Day

2.)  Friday is Fun Snack (Edible Arrangements)

3.)  Monday is Lunar New Year - we will be having a celebration and the Lion Dancers will be attending our school in the afternoon.

Write two sentences about the water filtration systems.  One sentence about what you noticed and the other sentence is what do you wonder.