Geometry, Poetry, and Communities

I hope everyone is staying warm!!  This weather is slightly ridiculous...if you ask me.  I'm really not a fan of cold weather.  And, the way it sounds, snow is probably coming our way tomorrow.  Please make sure that you listen to the radio/TV for any weather related announcements.  Also, make sure your child is dressed warmly in case they are able to go outside.

We have really been pushing forward in literacy.  Our theme is communities and we are learning what makes a good community.  Students are learning about goods, services, and resources -  how do they effect communities.  The two comprehension strategies that we have discussed this week are cause and effect and asking questions.  You may have noticed that I listed all of our comprehension strategies on the right side of the blog page.  I will highlight our focus strategies in red. 

**Asking questions - readers can ask themselves questions to better understand a text.  They may be able to find the answer to those questions in the text, by thinking on their own, or by consulting an outside text.

**Cause and Effect - readers can identify cause and effect to understand how events go together.  They learned that a cause is the reason something happens.  What happened is the effect.

I modeled both of these strategies with stories during mini-lessons these last two weeks.  Please discuss these with your child and encourage them to continue to monitor their comprehension. 

Math: We are wrapping up our unit on geometry.  Yesterday we learned about symmetry.  We learned that the imaginary dividing line is the line of symmetry.  Some objects can have one or more lines of symmetry.  They may not have a line of symmetry at all.  At the end of class we played a symmetry game online - which most of them loved.  I have posted the link on the left side of the blog page.  We will either start the test tomorrow or Monday. 

Writing: Last week we learned that writers can fancy up their words by using a thesaurus.  Students were given a boring word and they had to use a thesaurus book or the one online to make a list of better choice words.  During literacy we learned that words that mean the same thing are called synonyms.  I introduced acrostic poems to them yesterday.  I hope that they will make good word choices when writing their poems.  We will continue with the poetry unit for the next couple of weeks.  By the end of the unit they will know how to write three different kids of poems.

I hope that everyone has a super weekend!!  Stay warm and enjoy the snow!