September 20, 2016

QUEST Reading 4/5
Last week we added some information about identifying the setting and character traits to our interactive Reading Notebooks. These notebooks will be developed by the students and used throughout the year as a reference to the skills on which we will focus. Getting these notebooks up and running at the beginning of the year take a bit of time and patience, but they will be a valuable tool moving forward. We practiced applying these skills to our City of Ember text, and will continue to work on that through chapter 5.


QUEST Reading 3
3rd graders have also begun creating interactive Reading Notebooks. These notebooks will be developed by the students and used throughout the year as a reference to the skills on which we will focus. Getting these notebooks up and running at the beginning of the year take a bit of time and patience, but they will be a valuable tool moving forward. Last week we practiced answering questions completely by restating the main idea from the question in our response. The students also completed a readiness activity to help guide my instruction for the upcoming weeks. This week we will be practicing summarizing using the texts Going Places by Reynolds & Reynolds and Boy by Mayhew.


Math 4
In 4th grade math we have established and practiced group norms for holding math talks. We have also spent a bit of time reviewing estimation techniques to ensure our solutions are reasonable.


Math 3
Third graders are in the middle of a project that asks students to consider which school supplies would be the most useful to purchase if their teacher was awarded a grant to purchase additional materials. The project will culminate with the students creating their own bar graphs to display their thinking.