Monday, December 3rd, 2012

Can it really be December already?

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

*Please remember that we have field work to the Denver Art Museum this Wednesday. Students need to be here no later than 8:30 on Wednesday. All students need a water bottle, snack, and sack lunch in their backpacks for this field work. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Reader's Workshop
Readers use many strategies to make sense of what they're reading. Just a few of these strategies are; asking questions, determining importance, and inferring. We are currently doing a Chris VanAllsburg author study to practice all of these things. He is one of my favorite authors. His books are so thought provoking and lead to such rich discussions. You may be familiar with some of his books. The Polar Express and Jumanji are just two of his many titles. I would encourage families to check out some of his other books as well.

Since we're having all these wonderful conversations about what we read, we've decided to start blogging about our thinking. Be sure to check out our Kidblog site and see what we're thinking!
http://kidblog.org/MsHannis2012-2013Crew/wp-login.php?redirect_to=http%3A%2F%2Fkidblog.org%2FMsHannis2012-2013Crew%2Fwp-admin%2Findex.php&reauth=1

Students respond to a question during reading group

Writer's Workshop
We are using the genre of persuasive letters to learn about the craft of writing right now. Currently, we are revising our letters to make sure they are organized in a way that makes them easy to follow. We're also looking at the voice in our letters. We want to make sure it sounds like we are having a conversation with our readers. Be sure to look for these things when we share our letters with you.

Math
One of the skills we are practicing in math right now is measurement. I am reminding students how important it is to make sure the ruler is in the correct position before measuring. It is a common mistake for students to place their ruler at the end, rather than at the zero mark. Talk to your child about why it is important to measure correctly.

Expedition
To learn further about our case study big ideas about community, we will be doing some field work at the Denver Art Museum. We will look at how different artists interpreted community through their art.