Nothing New, Just Some Friday News
Today’s reading test went very well. As a class 20 of us got A’s, and our class average was a 95%. We did equally well on our spelling test on homophones. Great work, kids!
The only other comment I have is for parents. If you log into the grade book you can see whether I have a record of you returning the parent/teacher conference form. Please take a moment to make sure that my records are right. Thanks for your time on this matter. As of now I have 19 or 25 appointments all set to go.
That’s about all for now, I’m off to find some fish tacos! Have a great weekend!
read morePants on the Ground
We will behaving an open book science test tomorrow on forces and motion. We will also be having a reading test. Below is our book for the week (Coyote Places the Stars), feel free to read along.
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As we were walking between buildings yesterday, I heard behind me one of the funniest things I have heard as a teacher. Some of my students were singing the infamous American Idol hit of season 10 “Pants on the Ground”. It was one of those moments where I had to stop and shoot a video of it. Lot’s of fun!
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Marchionda Minutes Podcast: You, Me, and Bradley
In this week’s episode of the Marchionda Minutes podcast we hear from Bradley. We learn of his favorite subjects in school, and what he has enjoyed learning. We also learn about his birthday presents from a week ago, along with some advice on how to survive a mountain lion attack. Click here to see the podcast. Click the player below to listen to it.
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Parents – please be sure to send back the parent/teacher forms confirming your date and time of our parent/teacher conference. As of right now 12 of 25 have been confirmed. Thanks!
Here is the work for the day:
Grade Book Update, Math Probabilities, Conferences, and See You on Tuesday!
Monday is a teacher work day, so you all get to stay home. I will be here working diligently!
Click here to see pictures from Family Reading Night on our elementary school’s web site.
Also, I realized that I had not been publishing the grades for our work with adjectives and adverbs. I also noticed that I had not been publishing our work in multiplication. I apologize for this, did not realize that that information was not coming up for you. So, head on over there and check out those grades!
Notes for our scheduled parent/teacher conferences are coming home today. Parents, be sure to ask your child to hand it to you when they get home. Please email me if you have any concerns about the scheduled times.
Lastly, in math we practiced our multiplication facts by doing some dice rolling games and plotting our results. We had to roll the dice, find the sum of the roll, multiply the sum by a factor (determined on the sheet), and plot the results. As a class we competed 75 sheets. I, then, took the winning result off of each sheet and graphed it with the class in a large group. We discovered that the 1/1 and the 6/6 were pretty rare, while the middle sums/products were the most common results. Good luck in Vegas! 
Here is the large group class graph we made (click on the graph to see it larger):
Have a great weekend!
read moreSpirit Week is Next Week, Schedule Below:
Next week is Spirit Week. We will be celebrating our school pride by having a fashion week. Here is the schedule:
1/26 1950′s – Leather, rolled-up jeans, poodle skirts, bowling shirts, gloves, big dresses
1/26 1960′s – Hippies/Bell-bottoms, fringe vests, peace signs, flowers, headbands
1/27 1970′s – Disco/platform shoes, mini skirts, high boots, bell-bottoms, head bands, wrist bands, trucker hats
1/28 1980′s – Punk, big hair, spikes, mullets, mohawks, jelly shoes, leg warmers, exercise gear, zipper pants
1/29 1990′s Grunge, oversized sweaters, ripped jeans, flannels, designer shoes, baby doll dresses.
I have updated our Coming Events area in the sidebar. Please take a look there for events coming up in the next month. If you would like to know other dates of events coming further in the future, take a peak at our classroom calendar.
Parents – Please take a moment to check out your child’s grades in our Online Grade Book. As I was uploading them today, I was very impressed with many of the overall scores. I am very proud of how well we are doing in multiplication. Our transition into cursive is going well, also. There will be some adjustments as we pass through the next two weeks, but things are going pretty smoothly.
Here is the work for the day:
Spelling City Correction/Audio Book
I learned to day that our spelling list for week 16 was not up on SpellingCity.com. This afternoon I added it, sorry about skipping that week, but all is set to go now. Our link to this is in the sidebar to the right.
Below is our story for the week. Feel free to listen or read along with your text.
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Here is the work for the day:
DON'T TOUCH THE PURPLE GORILLA!!!
As a part of our tall tale story, Papa Tells Chita a Story, I felt it necessary to define what a tall tale was by telling my tall tale – The Tale of the Purple Gorilla! Kids feel free to tell your parents the story, parents (hahahaha) ask your kids to tell it to you! But, whatever you do, DON’T TOUCH THE PURPLE GORILLA!!
On a serious note, we got into adverbs in English today with a fun and active activity. You kids had me doing some strange things! Here is the movie from class:
Here is the work for the day:
Math Test Tomorrow!
Just a reminder that we will be taking our chapter 9 math test tomorrow. The test will include basic multiplication facts using arrays and choosing the right operation on the story problems. In the next chapters we will get into multiplication facts by factors. Here is the work for the day:
Friday News/More Fables/PTO Meeting Agenda
Today we took a test on our sayings and proverbs selection earning 14 A’s. Nice work, kids. We also took our spelling test, read the fables we wrote, and practiced multiplication arrays with our SMARTBoard. Busy, but fun day.
We really had a fun week with our proverbs and fables. Here is a link to some more fables of Aesop containing some background information on his life.
Click below to download the PTO Meeting agenda for Jan. 19. On the downloadable note there is some information about our school PTO discussing the use of SMARTBoards in the classroom, possibly making it a school goal to raise money to buy them for classrooms. We will be demonstrating them at the February PTO meeting. Feel free to attend. the date is on the note.
[Download not found]Have a great weekend, everyone!
read moreWriting Fables/Tests Tomorrow
In reading we have been analyzing proverbs and fables from different cultures. Today we wrote our own fables, modeling them after common proverbs. This took us quite a while, but well worth the work. We went through a writing process of brainstorming, mapping out the intitial ideas, then writing a final copy. After I scan them in to my computer, I will send them home. Hopefully, I will post some of the best in a gallery here on Marchionda.org.
Kids – This is a reminder to study your spelling words and to read our Saying We Share readings for the week.
In a Classroom Not So Far Away, We Became . . .
actors!!
Today we were assigned on of four fables to read with another partner, then act out the fable with no props. We only had about 20 minutes to plan this out, also. Some parts of the challenge were cooperation and creation with each other. On the academic side of this activity we were able to exercise our ability to infer meaning and demonstrate comprehension through acting! Each student had to get inside the character of the fable in order to pull this off.
Only the groups that wanted to be recorded were recorded and are shared here. Enjoy!
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