Monday, September 8

 Hi parents,

Today was a decent day for our class. It was really hot in the school though and everyone seemed a little exhausted.

We went over another reoccurring lesson for this year - 'spelling sentences'. This basically involves taking each of the weekly spelling words, and writing it in a sentence. While this may not seem like the most exciting activity (it isn't), it's probably the best way for students to build writing stamina and practice sentence structure in a low-stakes way. The sentences can be as silly, short, detailed, or interesting as kids want. The only rules are, they have to include at least one spelling word, and they need to be a complete sentence.

We also had Music and Gym in the morning.

In the afternoon, we worked with the Golden Beads material to represent some numbers. This was when the class seemed to get really tired. So it was hard to tell how much they were really grasping. The Golden Beads material is a fantastic way to teach place value and number representation, especially for bigger numbers 1000+, that can otherwise be hard for students to grasp. 

In Daily LA, we went over the creative writing station. This station gives students an opportunity to basically write in any context they want - they could write stories, poems, posters, essays, research papers, comics, you name it. Sometimes the abundance of choice can be a little overwhelming. If students are stuck, I encourage them to just use this time to practice spelling or finish other writing work.

Have a nice night,

Zac