Ms. Handel's Classroom
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That's all she wrote!

7/26/2013

 
Well...that's it.  School's out.  It's tough to believe that the three weeks are over already, but they are indeed complete!

My thanks go out to the students who had wonderfully positive attitudes towards being in school for an extra three weeks this year - I hope you enjoyed the activities we did in the classroom.  Thanks to the parents who emailed or stopped in to chat to let me know how it was going from their point of view.

There is still plenty of time left for the rest of summer - I've put a few suggestions at the bottom of their reports for how to help your children continue with literacy building over the next month and a bit before they go into a new grade.  

If your child was not at school today, the reports are being sent to the school board office in order to be mailed directly to you.

Thanks again for making this an excellent experience!  I wish everyone a happy summer and all the best in September!



Adieux, 
Ms. Handel

Only one more day!

7/25/2013

 
We did a bunch of 'wrap up' activities today!

Spelling test and corrections!  The same spelling words from Monday were on today's test and students were given time in class to do their corrections.

Full sentence answer quiz - students had a short paragraph from which to pull information out of in order to answer six questions.  

Despereaux quiz - twenty multiple choice questions for the quiz.  I will be handing these back tomorrow an give a few minutes to do corrections before we watch the movie.

Readers' Theatre - I gave the class about half an hour to practice their readers' theatre plays before they took a big gulp and performed in front of the class.  Success!  We discussed some of the positive things observed during the performance as well as some things that could be worked on to improve for the next time they get up in fro

Wednesday - Finished class novel!

7/24/2013

 
With only two days left, we completed the class novel of The Tale of Despereaux today.  We found out who lives happily ever after!

Time was given today to peer-edit the four haiku poems rough drafts that were due today.  Once we had three clock buddy sessions, I had students come over so I could check their work for them.  If they needed to add a syllable to the line, I gave them a '+' mark with however many syllables were needed...likewise with too many syllables, they got a '-' mark with the appropriate number of syllables.

Once we wrapped up with that activity, I gave the class time to work in their readers' theatre groups.  We have two groups performing tomorrow as some students will be absent the last day of summer session.

After recess, we gathered up the library books to send back to the library, then we finished the rest of the class novel!


Homework:
- Despereaux chapters 47-52 questions and vocabulary
- Haiku corrections (good copy starts tomorrow!)

Tuesday

7/23/2013

 
Today we worked on full sentence answers - we went over a sheet together and looked at which words to pick out of a question in order to fully answer a question.  We will be having a test on this in a few days.  I went around to check on students' examples from the morning exercise and asked them to use it as an example/notes for their upcoming quiz.

Spelling pre-test - we used a list of words that have been misspelled repeatedly in the past couple of weeks:

  1. armor 
  2. sword
  3. needle
  4. knife
  5. soup
  6. empathy
  7. quest
  8. ghost
  9. broke
  10. theatre

Time was given to do corrections, then we moved on to poetry!

Haikus - we had a class discussion about haikus first:
  • what are they about?
  • how long are they?
  • do they have to rhyme?
And we came up with the following:
  • 3 lines long
  • first line = 5 syllables
  • second line = 7 syllables
  • third line = 5 syllables
  • mostly about nature
We then brainstormed ideas about nature:
  • animals
  • plants
  • trees
  • water
  • wind
  • sun
  • weather
  • seasons
Afterwards, we made up an example poem from a class-generated topic of elephants:

Elephants, awesome
African and Indian
They eat plants and grass

Pretty good for a first go!  Then I set out the haiku assignment for the class: write four (4) haikus, one for each season (summer, fall, winter, spring).  That's a grand total of 68 syllables.  I will be bringing in student examples of the finished product tomorrow for them to get ideas from.  Once they have had their rough copies checked over by me, they can begin work on their good copies before they illustrate them.

Some students needed some extra time to work on overdue assignments and got some extra help at recess.

After recess, we jumped into the class novel and I read chapters 43-47 to students while they followed along in pairs.  

The last 15 minutes of the day was given for readers' theatre practice.  Today the 'Emperor's New Hair' group went outside to enjoy practice in the sun.


Homework: 
- Despereaux chapters 43-47 questions and vocabulary
- Haiu

Monday...again!

7/22/2013

 
Busy, busy, busy!

We've only got two more days of the novel study, then we can breathe a deep sigh of relief over the adventures of Despereaux Tilling!

Today we started off with handing work back to students and them organizing it into their binders.  I must say that I'm impressed with how quickly everyone is getting this completed in the morning!

Then we worked on some 'full sentence' practice with a short passage of text the students had to pick the answers out of and...put into full sentences.

Then I introduced the reader's theatre scripts to the class and they chose which of the plays they wanted to be involved in.  We had a choice between "The Emperor's New Hair," "The Three Little Elephants," and "Rafunzal."  Some time will be given in class to practice their parts, but they have also been instructed to take some time at home to practice, particularly if they have a larger speaking role.

After, we marked the apostrophes worksheets and corrected them before recess.

After recess, we read five more chapters of Despereaux and worked on questions and vocabulary words until the end of the day.


Homework:
- Despereaux chapters 38-42 questions and vocaulary
- 

Friday and sunny!

7/19/2013

 
Plenty going on in the classroom today!

We started off with a spelling test (some words from Wednesday's quiz and some other vocabulary words from the class novel).

After corrections, we marked the homophones worksheets and did corrections.  

An apostrophe worksheet was assigned after we reviewed the rules of apostrophes:

  • Shows possession of something:  Dave's baseball.
  • Used to take the place of letters in a contraction: can't = cannot

After recess, we read through four chapters of the class novel and had an hour to work on the questions and vocabulary assigned due for Monday.


Homework:
  • Apostrophe worksheet (most finished in class)
  • Despereaux chapters 34-37 questions and vocabulary


Happy weekend,
Ms. Hnade

Thursday!

7/18/2013

 
"More homework?" groaned the class.

"More homework!" cheered the teacher.

I couldn't help myself - I enjoyed last week's 'Said it Dead' assignment.


Today we handed more work back for students to organize in their binders, then we had a pop-quiz sentence dictation.  Two sentences with a focus on homophones and apostrophe usage:

1) Despereaux's brother threw him through the door into the dungeon.
2) The king declared all rats outlaws.

One of the common mistakes I see these days (in any classroom I go into) is the misuse of homophones and apostrophes.  These are one of the grammatical themes we have been working on in class.  I remind students that an apostrophe is not added to make something plural (his shoe's =/= his shoes), but is used to show either a contraction or ownership of an object:

  • Dave's baseball cards. = The cards belonging to Dave.
  • He can't come out to play. = He cannot come out to play.


Once we marked the two sentences, students had time to do their corrections then silently read while I checked on progress.

The remaining time before recess was given to finish up with the homophone booklet that was started yesterday. 

After recess, I read chapters 29-33 of Despereaux and students had the rest of the day to work on the questions and vocabulary that goes with it.



Homework:
- Homophone booklet 
- Despereaux chapters 29-33 questions and vocabulary

Mid-Week come and gone!

7/17/2013

 
Busy, busy day as usual!

Today we worked on getting the marked assignments back where they belong in our binders.  Plenty of things to put away today, let me tell you!

I have been noticing a number of commonly misspelled words as I see the assignments roll in, so we had an impromptu spelling test today with words from the class novel as well as some more 'everyday' words.  The 'real' test will be this Friday.

We marked the homophones worksheet that went home as homework and had time for corrections afterward.  

Some time was given to enjoy those books they got out of the library yesterday!  If students had corrections to make from their spelling tests, they were asked to use this time to do so.

We also began a homophone booklet today - only the first few pages were due (more fill-in-the-blank with the correct answer kind of assignment).

For Despereaux we read through five chapters (FIVE chapter?!) and answered questions and vocabulary words to go with it.  In truth, it's eight questions and four vocabulary words.  We also learned about the early life of the character Miggery Sow.


Homework due for tomorrow:
- Homophones booklet pages 47-50
- Despereaux chapters 24-28

Library today!

7/16/2013

 
The big excitement for the day was that we were able to go to the library and check out books.  It was great seeing everyone so jazzed about getting something to read!

Today we worked on:

Journal starter:  If you are going to write a book, would it be fiction or fact?  What would it be about?

We went over the booklet on synonyms after we got settled in and worked on corrections.

We have discussed homographs and homophones these past few days together.  We went over examples of each (homographs LOOK the same, homophones SOUND the same).  We then worked on a page of fill-in-the-blank homophones in sentences where you are given a choice of two to three words that sound the same, but there is only one correct answer.

After recess, we continued on with Despereaux and discovered what happened to the queen!

At 11:30 it was a trip to the library and students were able to check out two books each.  These books, however, MUST stay at school as we only have them until next Wednesday and summer session has to leave the library the way we found it.



Homework due tomorrow:
- Corrections on synonyms booklet
- Homophones fill-in-the-blank worksheet
- Despereaux chapter 20-23 questions and vocabulary

PS - Don't forget to bring a water bottle - it's hot out there!

Monday...again!

7/15/2013

 
It's that time again!  I don't know about all of you, but I think Mondays are the hardest days after a weekend of sunny weather!

Today:

Boggle starter - we had 16 random letters up on the board and made as many words as we could with them.  I think the record was over 100!

Synonyms booklet - we worked on this for about an hour before recess.  We went through the sheets together and had time to ask questions about the assignment.  There are 6 pages in total that are due for tomorrow morning: one multiple choice page, and the rest are fill-in-the-blanks with the synonyms.  We discussed how to look up words in both dictionaries and thesauruses to try to find the meanings to the words given to us.

Textbooks...again - I brought in a few textbooks from my university days to show the students that the textbook features are pretty much universal.   We compared our list of textbook features from the ones we 'walked' through on Friday to the ones I brought in today.  The features listed in the previous day's blog...are all there.  Some students were pretty surprised! 

Despereaux - we began the second book in the novel today and read through chapters 16-19.  Plenty of vocabulary words today and we met the villain of the book!


Homework due for tomorrow:
- Synonyms booklet (we will mark this in class)
- Despereaux chapters 16-19 questions and vocaulary
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