thoughts on 5/13 and last assignments of the year!

Dear Families,

We had a whirlwind of a day. Helpers were plentiful--thanks to Mrs. Jennifer (Kitty's mom), Hayden (Kitty's baby sister), Mr. Michael (Wood's dad) and Mrs. Beth (Wood's mom).

The kids are beating me at incorporating Latin into our talks. This would be fun at home. "I want to wear the rufus shoes." "Look! I see duo, viridis, infans lacerta crawling up the screen!"

At history time, we saw a video on "The Lost Colony of Roanoke" that was quite informative. Mr. Michael pointed out that he and Woods had actually been there. Mrs. Jennifer and I commented on how much WE learned from it. It was a History Channel production and did a great job of showing how life was for the very first settlers to the new world. We moved into a discussion of the current SOTW chapter and John Cabot. We read a little from a biography on him, yet it was a bit dry, so we moved swiftly into grammar.

Everyone was so anxious to share their stories! They were awesome! Of the four types of writing presented in Shurley, this was by far our favorite. We had fun listening and then rated them on a spectrum of 100% true stories to 100% pretend. Some of the students are going to continue to build on their stories. Yeah!

We did a simple science experiment about water currents in the deep and their effect on plankton. This involved a hike over to the Episcopal church. Look for the Science Speculation sheets and be sure they get into the science section of their big notebooks.

Literature discussion time was heated! Similes were abundant in Chanticleer, but I stand by my teaching that there were no metaphors!!! My students challenged me and we discussed and talked. I've just gotten off the phone with an expert--Mrs. Fowler--and I am vindicated! One example we considered was "His comb was redder than fine coral and turreted like a castle wall". She called this personification, which is a writing element that we will encounter in later grades. The only phrase that might be considered a metaphor in this book is "Woe is me". Mrs. Fowler said if you really push the technical definition that this phrase could be considered a metaphor. Look on page 280 in the teaching text for further discussion with your student. Tell them I said, "Nanny nannay-moo moo!"

We ended our day with reading part of our last literature selection.

Please look at this blog site again later today or tomorrow. I plan to post my vision of what we will do at the end-of-year presentation next week. I shared some of this with the children yesterday.

love,
Mrs. Tkach

HISTORY:
--narration on ch. 41
--map and color page for ch. 41
--read ch. 42
--(I included color page and map for ch. 42. These don't need to be turned into me but I thought you might want to complete your notebooks by having them. We may do a narraton in class next week on ch. 42)

LITERATURE:
--finish reading A Midsummer's Night Dream

GRAMMAR:
--using my example from class and reference 61 on pg. 48, produce a descriptive paragraph. The teaching script on page 349 will be of help to you parents as you guide your students in this exercise.

SCIENCE:
--read 209 through 216
--produce a narration on this reading
--I apologize. I'm a bit lost on which words I've assigned. If some of these were assigned last week, just move on to the new ones that you haven't done. Enter planula (pg. 189), pinacoderm (pg. 203),ostia (pg. 204),osculum (pg.204) spicules (pg. 205),planarians (pg. 213), mimcry (pg.213) in your science spirals
--study the last 26 words we've entered--that will be starting with mantle. We won't have a test but we'll have fun playing around-the-world.

BIBLE:
--read chapter 99 which is taken from II Kings 24 and 25; II Chronicles 36; Jeremiah 37-40; Lamentations 1; Psalms 137