Friday, November 3

 Hi parents,

We wrapped up our week on a high note. We had a spelling quiz, and then did a collaborative paragraph writing activity. We talked about the idea of 'flow' in writing. I was thinking a lot about my earlier attempts at teaching paragraph wring this week, and I came to the conclusion that it was just too structured. So we're taking a more flexible approach. 

We wrote this one together as a class. Then, they students read it aloud, over and over, to see if it 'flowed'. We talked about how reading aloud multiple time is important, because often the first time students proof read something, they read it in a choppy, robotic way, and it's hard to tell how it's really supposed to sound.

We went outside and played kickball in gym. Then, we used to Golden Beads to learn about subtraction problems with regrouping and multiple place values of zero. For example:

3002 - 1255 = ____.

We used the golden beads to show how we have to split one thousand cube into 9 hundreds, 9 tens, and 10 ones, before we can proceed with the subtracting.

We learned about some different shading and sketching techniques, and how using different pressure can result in darker or lighter lines. The students experimented with these techniques and drew some spheres.

Next week is only 3 days for the students - so we'll be doing a spelling review. Stay tuned for those words. :)

Have a nice weekend,

Zac