Monday, October 3, 2011

We began each Monday with our Community Circle.  The group seems to be grasping the ideas of what it means to be a good speaker.  I will have to take a photo of the chart we use to ensure we are covering the who, what, when, where, how, and why when it is time to share.  As an added dimension, we might include the thoughts and feelings we had.

The Math tests from last week were marked and the majority of students scored above 66% which is just shy of a Level 3 or B grade.  We will review it in class once I return from Cross Country on Tuesday and continue to work our way through the JUMP fractions unit.  At this point, the students should be practicing 2, 3, 5, and 9 multiplication table up to 10.  We will be having rotating quizzes on a regular basis and making sure the students know what multiplication table is needed in order to move forward in the JUMP fractions unit.

I gave the students the opportunity to ask questions about the CASI comprehension unit as well as reading the story to them once again.  After the answers are assessed, it will provide me with some important information about what areas in reading the students require help in over this school year.  When some of the students had questions, I tried to break down the question without giving away the answer.

Today also saw the beginning of our first formal unit on writing.  Similar to the approach in JUMP Math, the idea is to begin with the building blocks one step at a time.  We talked about the key parts of a sentence -- the Subject and the Verb-- and began to play a game by combining words from a list we created in class.  Here is the list:

This unit will continue looking at the basics of sentence structure, writing simple sentences, and developing a deep understanding of what it means to convey a complete thought.