Curriculum Night

9/21/10

Another half day here at the Angier. The day flew by and the students learned a lot!

Spelling:

I'm so excited to learn about spelling! I'm a terrible speller, so I'm hoping to learn the tricks of the trade! Today was all about the closed syllable learning. When a word is spelled with a consonant-vowel-consonant, the vowel is pronounced with it's short sound (think, "cat"). Brilliant! Students get to choose ten words from a list of 30 to learn how to spell over the week. They need to divide the words up into syllables, look up the definitions, and write a sentence using the word.

Math:

Stem & Leaf Plots were all the rage today! Dr. Morse had an adorable flower and leaf visual to help explain how to properly display a data set within a stem & leaf plot.

Here's an example of a stem & leaf plot:

And here's Dr. Morse's awesome stem & leaf visual:

(much cooler)

Grammar:

We learned the difference between common and proper nouns, and discussed how capital letters are used to distinguish proper nouns. Ms. Conrad had a discussion about what the words common and proper mean in general conversation, then applied those definitions to the description of common and proper nouns.

Curriculum Night:

I was able to leave class early to attend the 5th Grade Curriculum Night at the Angier. The teachers gave a great presentation to the parents about the topics that will be covered throughout the year, and the expectations of parents (drop off kids on time, don't help them with homework, etc.).

Parents then came up to the classroom to see the learning environment, and to get a short description of Ms. Wink's expectations of students. Earlier in the day, the students left notes for their parents about the areas of the classroom that they wanted them to learn about. The parents then wrote a letter to their children with information about their 5th grade experience. Super cute! For me, it was fun to meet the parents, and to catch up with a friend from BC whose son is in my class! Impossible odds that I would be placed in his classroom, but I'm loving it! I particularly love to see him wear his BC gear!

Long day, but it was a good one.