Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Today we completed the heritage studies study guides. Both grades will have a short quiz on the information Friday. There is less than 15 items on the study guide, so the students should not have a problem studying them.

We reviewed for science today. 6th graders completed an assignment yesterday and 5th graders had a "pop quiz" on everything from their science vocabulary today. This will count as the bonus points for their tests tomorrow, allowing them to get up to 5 bonus points.The 5th graders only have 20 items all together that they need to know. For both grades, we have worked on the information together, Monday and Tuesday. Since it was mostly just vocabulary, each student was responsible for writing the information down from a transparency and had more than enough time to get it done in class the last two days.

6th graders moved on to Greatest Common Factors in math today. I do not like the way that the book shows for solving this problem. I believe that it is for the benefit of the students to work it out the same way that they worked on the charts, like on page 42 #4. They should take the two numbers, write out all of the pairs of factors, then write out the factors, and find the greatest common factor from that. By doing it this way, I feel like it is helping them learn the multiplication facts better because they are having to find what two numbers multiplied together make the original number.

5th grade did not do a new math lesson today. They had a practice worksheet for fractions and then had an opportunity to work out any problems they missed on their math test and ask any questions about ones that they got wrong. This was not for points, because they had a math worksheet from last week that counted as their bonus points. I did it for their benefit, so that they had the chance to ask any questions about how to work something out.

Try-outs started today for the Christmas play. They will continue the rest of this week beforing making their decisions. Not all students will get to have an acting part, but there are extra spots for helpers and things like that.

I'm in the process of calling all of you that signed up for a conference. Please be patient as I can only call a few parents at a time. If you have not heard from me by the end of next week, please leave a comment on here or send a note with your student.