Week 8

This is really 2 week blog post rolled into one.  With having Parent Conferences last week, it kind of got everything off schedule.  It was lovely seeing all the parents last week.  I loved showing you how much the children have been doing and learning since the beginning of school.  In some ways, it is hard to believe that we have only been in school 8 weeks.....the growth in just a short time is remarkable.  

We are still working on becoming WORD NERDS!!!!  One activity that we have added into our word study is Color Words.  Towards the end of studying our words, when we know them really well, we decide what color best represents the word.  Some words are clear.....most students colored harbor blue to represent water.  But a few of the words are open to student interpretation.   One student colored the word 'expand' brown.  He explained that brown reminded him of a rubber band, and rubber bands expand!

Then we take turns sharing our thoughts with a partner.

Our journey stories are finished.  The students took this piece of writing from rough draft, revise, edit and publishing.  The did a wonderful job!

The other special event that happened this month was Grandparents/Special Friends day.  We welcomed so many visitors who came to support Arleta.

For art this week, we tried to make realistic self portraits.  We discussed proportions of our eyes, mouth and nose.  It was an interesting process.

For our Portland study, we are studying the development of the early city.  Students were broken into trios and given a section to read.  Their job was to read the selection 3 times....the first for the 'gist'....to gain understanding of what the section was about.  The second time we read, we pay attention to words that are new to us.  The 3rd time we read, we mark any questions that we have or points that we think are important to remember.   You can see how we use color pencil to mark up our passages.

Then each trio got to present their section to the class.  We are all teachers in this class!