The Halloween Week

It seems that in the educational world, you never get a chance to recover from what happened yesterday, because all your energy is being spent on the next lesson, the next motivational technique, or on the next day, or even on helping each student succeed. The month of October has been filled with lots of learning, and lots of activities and this week feels like we have stuffed everything into a tiny pumpkin. My apologies, if there has been something that we have forgotten to finish or announce.

The students have been able to get out of homework on Monday, because the end of the day came too fast. I have forgotten to announce The Pumpkin Walk, even though it has been on my lesson plan in big bold letters, "Announce: Pumpkins Bring them on Friday!" The little activities that make it so important to a child, seem to have been pushed out of the way, that is one of the reasons I decided we needed a break, we are going on a mini-field trip tomorrow. We need to see real learning. We need to get out of the four walls that are filled with essential learning and a very dedicated curriculum, and place our focus on applying that learning to the real world.

Our walking FieldTrip will be about a mile long (approximately 1:40-2:20 p.m.), as we walk around Bear River City, checking on a couple of Geocaches.  So what is Geocaching, it is a sport that everyone and anyone can do. Geocaching is a real world outdoor treasure hunting game. Here is an explanation found on the www.geocaching.com website:



So is it the real world? Well it will be the start to a whirlwind of fun activities on Friday, which for your information looks like this:
8:10 - Morning work
8:30 - Assembly
P.E. will be canceled again (Soccer - with a real game)
Recess
10:00 - Spelling Test, and Reading Test
10:30 - Reading Buddies
11:00 - Finish Tests, and "Author's Chair"
Lunch
12:15 - Read Aloud (I have to finish the book I have been reading so we can start a new one on Monday).
12:30 - Costume Parade (with some twist to the traditional route) Best place to view the students will be outside along the sidewalks.
Break
1:40 - Halloween Party (If you would like to contribute send a treat), I plan on doing some games with them, taking their pictures with their wonderful costumes and in general having fun with the students. There will also be some time to take their pumpkins out for the Pumpkin Walk.

“It’s the way you ride the trail that counts.” - Roy Rogers

Week 7

Everything is happening this week. Parent Teacher Conferences, Reading Groups start Monday, our centers will have to be ready by tomorrow morning, new spelling list, more vocabulary, new writing assignment and lessons, plus at some point in the next three weeks we will be working with GPS units (more about that later).

Daily Grams: Why do I place such an emphasis on learning the language?

I thought it might be helpful for you as parents to know what we do everyday. I will start with an example of our Daily Grams. We do this every morning first thing when we sit down as the students wait for the school announcements, and I take attendance. I feel that the English language needs to be practiced and used so we can understand it better and utilize its tools in our reading and writing. This week I have outlined basically what the students will see on their Daily Grams. For example, a recent assignment had the following:

1. A part of a friendly letter, (Dear John,)
2. exclamation marks in sentences, (Wow! We did it!)
3. Sentence Types (Give your sister a pencil. - is an example of a command).
4. the use of pronouns (Me and Garret or Garret and I went home.) , and
5. Combining two subjects into a compound subject. (Kiora ran in a race. Kauri also ran in a race. = Kiora and Kauri ran in a race).

Daily Grams and the parts of the grammar that are emphasized each day also correlate with the new common core http://www.corestandards.org/ The Language Standards - Grade-3: L.3.2. Demonstrate command of the conventions of standard English capitalization, punctuation, and spelling when writing.

1. Capitalization (part of a friendly note, proper nouns, do not capitalize plants or animals, Titles).
2. Punctuation (Exclamations, Initials, Comma after town, Possessive nouns, Abbreviations).
3. Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   
   • A. Sentence Types (statement, question, command).
   • B. Adjectives describe, and they often tell what kind
   • C. Prefixes / Roots / Suffixes - Some words are made by adding a prefix before the main word (root). Example: bicycle
   • D. Subject of a sentence tells who or what the sentence is about. The verb often shows action.
4. More Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   • A. Pronouns take the place of nouns (Use I as the subject of a sentence).
   • B. Nouns (plural nouns, most words add s, however add es to words ending in sh and ch).
   • C. Verb has to agree with the subject. A boy rides / ride his bicycle.
   • D. Prepositions and how they work in a sentence.
5. Sentence Combining (Combining the subject, combine a list, use adjectives to combine).

Thanks, I hope you can see why I practice the language a lot. The students need that practice so they can feel comfortable reading and writing the English language. 

Mr. Fisher


Next post tomorrow night: Guidelines for Parent Teacher Conference. (In other words I will give an outline of what I plan to share with parents, that way you will know what to expect when you visit on Wednesday or Thursday night). Conferences are 3:00 - 6:30 p.m. each night.