Half Day Activities

Today was an odd day!  7-8 students didn't come to school today.  Parents - even when it is a half day, we are still in school.  When you allow your student to skip the day, that means they are behind.  Today we had a Math Performance Task and now your students are behind in math.  I wanted to start our new unit is ReadyGen, but with 1/3 of the class absent, we did review and test prep....  The only way for your child to show progress is to be present and participate!   COME TO SCHOOL!

• 1st - prepping room for parent teacher conferences - cleaned up our desks, straightened up the areas of the room that needed it, and fixed up the library.   We collected books from the last ReadyGen Unit (Earthquakes) and passed out the new class novel "The BFG" and the new ReadyGen Nonfiction text "Anatomy of Volcanoes".
• 2nd - Test Prep ELA - We read two articles on the Dust Bowl and then talked went into answering short response questions.  Again, the format is super easy to remember:
• R - Restate the question in the form of a statement
• A - Answer the question by making a claim or stating your opinion
• C - Cite your evidence either by paraphrasing or directly quoting from the text
• E - Explain how the evidence you used proves your answer
• 3rd - Math Performance Task - We spent the period going over each question step by step.  We talked about what exactly each question was asking, the steps to solve it, and how to check each answer.  Tomorrow they will be given the performance task to make sure they are able to do the problems on their own.  
• We went to lunch at 11:00 AM.
• After lunch we had to have the safety officers check all the students backpacks because unfortunately one of the students discovered that the $29 dollars they had brought to school for the book fair was missing from their desk.  The safety officers checked all their bags and didn't find the missing money.  I sincerely hope that one of our students didn't take it.  I would hate to think that I couldn't trust one of my McSmarties.  Parents - if you see that your child suddenly has $29 dollars, let me us know.  This is also a great time to talk to your kids about keeping money and valuables in safe places, not in your desk.

Homework:

1. Bring your parents to Parent Teacher Conferences
2. Short Response Answer from ELA Test Prep
3. Question in Math Test Prep