Mid March Update

Renaissance

In the Renaissance Project that we have been working on we have completed two outlines of 2 sources about the Renaissance and 2 sources about 2 famous people, drafted our reports, and received lessons on introductions and conclusions. We also revised for Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice and Sentence Fluency. Then we had peer revision for the same traits, edited for conventions and had peer editing sessions. We added revisions and edits over the weekend and completed the final drafts. You may get to hear some of these at Author's Tea!

Reading

We have had several reading sessions with the assignment to find evidence of descriptive words to help us see authors' word choice and its effects on what we see in our minds.

Weather

We began with the atmosphere and its layers. We investigated effects of sun rays on various places of the earth, and wind- prevailing winds and jet streams. We are now focusing on the lows and highs and air movement.

Math. The groups continue to move through their second books of the year. The current topics are percentages, order of operations and area and perimeter.

Spelling

We are working on units in school.

Flying Deer!

It is coming up on 3/23. Please read the weekly reminders for preparing your children.

Spring Fling is coming up! The flyer went home. Parents can build a flying machine if inspired!

End of February/Beginning of March

The Red Fox Clan began Renaissance Project. Here is the brief outline of the project:

1. Make sure your outlines of the two chapters on the Renaissance are complete

2. Choose two famous people to research

3. Find at least two resources using your local library and or the internet

4. Photocopy and then write the topics in the margins, highlight, and outline (if photocopying isn’t available or you aspire to make a high quality outline straight from reading the book, go for it!)

5. Organize your outlines and determine how many paragraphs you will write and what they will consist of

6. Draft the body of your report

7. Get lessons on writing an introduction and a conclusion, and then write!

8. Self revise ideas, organization, voice, sentence fluency and word choice

9. Peer revise the above mentioned traits

10. Self edit conventions

11. Peer edit conventions

12. Final Draft

Students have been working this past week on outlines, which are due tomorrow, March 9. First drafts are due Monday, March 14. Peer revising and editing will take place in school on Thursday, March 17th and final drafts will be due March 22nd. Red Fox Clanners have chosen some fascinating folks to research. I'm quite excited to see them put their research, outlining and writing process skills to use!

Students completed final drafts of their Weather/Wildlife Reports. Using nces.ed.gov, students created line graphs, bar graphs and pie charts. Using OpenOffice students created tables of their data. Stop by the room and look for our reports hanging on the bright red paper!

We have also begun our investigation of weather at one of the most exciting weather times of the year! We began by watching a discovery video on weather and have had lessons focusing on air and the atmosphere. Students have recorded what they've learned in their Flight Logs, complete with pictures and diagrams.

And... more writing. The Red Fox Clan completed the writing process with their five paragraph essays. As mentioned in the last post, students self and peer edited/revised. They also completed a revision/editing checklist and rated their piece using a rubric. The topics which they assessed were Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency and Conventions.