Thursday, January 08, 2009

This morning we did spelling sentence dictations again. Ms. Stern passed out the papers from Tuesday first for us to see how we did, looking carefully at the things we did right and also pay attention to the mistakes that we made so that we can concentrate on fixing them. Most children felt that they did better on today’s dictations than Tuesday’s.

Next, we finished working on our New Year’s Resolutions. A resolution is something that you want to change (for the better) in your life. It might be to stop a bad habit or to start a good one. Here are some of our resolutions:

My New Year’s Resolution is to stop fighting with my brother. –Carly
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop picking my nose. –Mia
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop pulling my pants down. –Joshua
My New Year’s Resolution is to start raising my hand. –Isabella
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop playing my DS so much. –Nolan
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop being bad in my house. -Emily
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop picking my nose. -Michael
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop fighting with my cousin. –Axl
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop jumping off of the couch. –Bartosz
My New Year’s Resolution is to play more sports. –Darren
My New Year’s Resolution is to stop jumping on my bed. -Kevin

We had library this morning. Ms. Eyer passed out dictionaries for us to share with a partner. Everyone was asked to make observations about what they noticed. We discovered that there are pictures (including a section with pictures of all of the presidents), words in bold print, and colors for each of the letters on the side. Then we practiced putting things in alphabetical order on the Smartboard. First we practiced with letters, then words, then pictures of animals, and finally we used our names. Afterwards, we were able to have book exchange.

In gym, we practiced the Blue dance for the dance festival. We also played games with the parachute. Mia got to go in the middle. We used balls to pop up just like popcorn on top of the parachute.

This afternoon, we continued practicing writing good sentences. We realized that sentences MUST have three things: an uppercase letter at the beginning; a period or punctuation mark at the end; a complete thought that makes sense (and includes a naming and a telling part). We practiced sorting sentences from phrases on the Smartboard. This week we have worked together to create ONE good sentence that matched a picture. Then we came up with a sentence that we wrote and cut up on a sentence strip. We even got to switch with a partner and have them put it in order. Today, we wrote 2-3 sentences about another picture. Ms. Stern and Mrs. Barsanti were looking to see who remembered to include all of the things that we’ve been working on. Next, we’re going to try to remember to include these ideas in our writing!