I am excited about the start the AIG students have gotten off to this first nine weeks. So far, we have jump started our mystery unit by learning about fingerprinting. Students have read material on this subject, reported it back to their peers, and discovered their own fingerprint type(s). We are about to start our mystery reading, with the Battle of the Books participants reading The Dollhouse Murders, by Betty Ren Wright. Those not participating in the BOB competition will choose a mystery on their appropriate reading level. We will utilize a literature circle in sharing our novels. Students are responsible for documenting summaries, connections, unfamiliar vocabulary, and questions they have as they are reading. They are also to use metacognition skills when reading, as was modeled for them with the reading of Chris Allsburg’s, The Wretched Stone. Students should be using these skills to ask themselves if their reading sounds right, looks right, and if it make sense.
Not only did we use the fingerprinting information for reading class, we incorporated the data into our math lesson. Collected data was used by 4th and 5th graders to create both a bar and circle graph. Both classes have also participated in a problem solving scavenger hunt, demonstrating the problem solving strategies they used on scribblar, an interactive web tool. Math star problems will be assigned each month, as well as a monthly math marvel problem, which can be found on my teacher website.
Please be sure to check out my interactive teacher website, as you will be able to view student avatars, animations, blogging, glogs and more! Also, feel free to contact me throughout the year with any questions or concerns you may have.
As always, I am excited to be your child’s teacher-
