January 13-15

Sorry for not keeping up~my kiddos are sick! Luckily, Mr. Lambright was able to stay home with them today. :) In Science, we fixed our Earth's Processes assessment as a review to keep up with what we've learned previously and then today, took a pre-test over electricity. Some tricky words for them--which we will be learning--were conductors, insulators and electromagnet. No worries, tomorrow we will begin our inquiry study on circuits and electricity. We also worked a little with Ohio's road to Statehood. In Math, we have been focusing on fractions of sets and the connection with multiplication and division. I think they are finally realizing how important those basic facts are! I don't like for substitutes to read our chapter book during Read Aloud (I guess I'm stingy and subs don't do the voices as well...) so on Monday, the substitute read Miz Berlin Walks by Jane Yolen and yesterday, she read The Stupids Die. The book yesterday with the crazy title dealt with a family that went through a blackout and thought they were all dead. This was just a comical short read that they were able to connect to City of Ember. In Reader's Workshop, we compared two different informational texts about the same topic and completed a chart to show the most important information within the texts. Today, we made these connections and discussed why we may need to consult two texts about the same topic-validity. Finally, in Writer's Workshop, we continued learning about researching by completing an Ohio Studies Weekly on the basics of researching. We also described our favorite place to visit using details.