May 22, 2016

It is hard to believe that we are down to the final 8 days of school. It has been such a pleasure to watch everyone grow, gain new skills and develop new strengths. We will all be sad to see them leave Chippewa but I am confident that everyone is ready for the new adventures and challenges that await them in 4th grade. Thank you for sharing your children with me this school year they have truly been a pleasure to have in class.

ELA-We finished reading Charlotte's Web and throughout the story we practiced a variety of the strategies we have learned this school year. We sequenced events in the story, retold chapters, identified the problem/solution in chapters and wrote about the main idea of chapters. As our culminating activity the children were given a menu of activities they could choose from for their final project. These activities include:
1.  Drawing a new cover for the book using one of the main events in the story and writing a summary to include on the back,
2. Drawing a map of the fairgrounds using details from the text and including a map key, 
3. Conducting an interview with a partner in which each person chooses a character from the book to be and then writes thoughtful questions to ask their partner along with the answers after the interview,
4. Writing a diary from Fern's point of view of at least 5 events within the story.
The students chose their activities last week and began working on their planning sheets and rough drafts. They will be working on completing their final projects this week.

Writing-We have been working on developing personal narrative stories. Each student has chosen a seed story or in other words an event that created strong emotions for them and they focused on that one moment during that event to write their personal narrative story. We have been developing leads, dialogue, adding details including strong words and showing not just telling the story. Lastly, we worked on developing an ending for their story. The class is working on their final edits of their rough draft and are having writing conferences. Following their writing conference they will be working on their final masterpiece writing. 

Science/Social Studies-We finished our Rocks and Minerals unit and the student's tests came home in their Friday folders. We have moved on to our Social Studies unit about Cleveland. The students are working on a self guided learning experience called Cleveland Rocks! They have been given a slideshow template in which they have to research different aspects of Cleveland and they are adding pictures and answering questions on their slideshow. We began this before our field trip so they had some background knowledge before our trip and then the field trip also provided us with additional information that will be useful in completing the slideshow. The final product will be due this Friday, May 26.

Math-We finally finished our Fractions unit and have moved on to Geometry. We have learned about lines, angles and polygons. We will be moving on to triangles and quadrilaterals this week. 

Upcoming Events:
May 23-Wild-n-Wonderful Assembly
May 26-Bossie's Ice Cream visits Chippewa
June 1-Field Day/Last Day of School/Dismissal 1:40 p.m.

I hope everyone has a wonderful and safe summer.