Friday, May 31

 Hi parents,

We had a pretty awesome week. Thanks for understanding the lack of blog posts, it was an exceptionally busy week, and the next couple are looking equally busy. But I'm really impressed by the work the students did this week - there were some big improvements! I'll go over the main things we did this week:

Sharing Assembly 

Probably the biggest event of the week was our sharing assembly, which was at 9:00 this morning. We practiced every day this week for 15-45 minutes, and it definitely paid off. The students delivered their lines with confidence, and many opted to memorize them rather than reading from a script! The speeches were moving, the book was nice, the division was well-explained, and the song was heartwarming. I'm very proud of everyone!

Persuasive Writing

We did a few persuasive writing prompts this week. The students addressed the questions: 

"Would you rather be able to fly, or breathe underwater?"

and... 

"Would you rather sleep for a whole year, or stay awake for a whole year?"

With these tasks, we focused on providing and explaining reasons, as well as writing in the correct tense. We talked about how its important to be mindful of using the words "I" and "you", as well as "would" vs. "will". A lot of students struggled with this at first, and would write sentences like: "I would rather breathe underwater, because you can see lots of fish, and I will take pictures of them." But we did a lot of editing and I do believe the class walked away with some new perspectives on writing.

 

Math - Fractions, Percentages, and Factoring

We're kind of at the point in the year where we've covered all the big stuff in math, and now its just a matter of filling in the missing pieces. We learned about simplifying fractions, in basic terms, as well as how to turn a basic fraction into a percentage, by writing the equivalent version with a denominator of 100. Today, we learned about factoring, which I regret not teaching earlier, because I think it would've made equivalent fractions easier.

 

Gym - Basketball

We've been playing lots of basketball in gym. We learned about dribbling, passing (bounce pass and chest pass), and shooting, although we don't have hoops.

Drills - Lockdown AND Fire

We had a Lockdown Drill and a Fire Drill this week, both of which went well.

YMCA Field Trips Next Week!

I sent a message out earlier about what to expect from next week. Thank you so much to everyone for getting their forms back! :) Please let me know if you have any questions, or would like to volunteer - it would be great to have one more volunteer for our Swimming Day on Friday.

Have a great weekend,

Zac