Whew! I’m finally back! I am so thankful for Lewis.What a special place of caring and supportive people. I had the opportunity to speak with the kids about my journey to Michigan and particularly about death. I framed the discussion as helping my sister stop suffering. The students were very receptive. Some of the students even shared their connections to death or family members who have passed away. This week we are working on beginning the CAFE model of literacy. CAFE stands for Comprehension (do I understand the text), Accuracy (do I read the words accurately), Fluency (do I read with expression), and Vocabulary (expanding our vocabulary base in self-selected books). We also started our Daily 5 model. A time of day where students choose from: Read to Self, Working on Writing, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, and Word Work. This will be an ongoing rollout of our literacy time in the morning coupled with the cafe model. In math, we are entering multiplication and division using arrays (rectangular arrangements using tiles) to better understand the connections between multiplication and division. We started our new read aloud entitled, “Maniac Magee,” a story that speaks to individuality, segregation/racism, and sense of home. We will finish up our science unit with Mrs. Zimmerman about Circuits and Pathways. Please discuss with your child what a conductor of electricity  is, and what does not conduct electricity. Students will explore the Ipads this week and we will begin to incorporate them into our learning. Homework this week: reading log and 3 pages of Math. Please check out our classroom blog at http://marchyok.posterous.com/.

This entry was posted on September 26, 2011 at 7:46 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.