Good afternoon!

We had a nice day today.  We started off the day today by working on language.  The children worked on contractions, opposites, and writing sentences.  During math today we continued on with grouping the tens and ones columns.  The children practiced 'trading' groups of ones into tens when necessary, then they compared the two types of adding- place value mats and traditional adding.  They also had a review of adding and subtracting and patterning.  In history today we read about Julius Caesar and Confucius and what they did in their respective times and places.  As a class we read about some of the important messages that Confucius delivered, such as "Do not do onto others what you would not want others to do to you" and "If you make a mistake and don't fix it, this is called a mistake".  These are good lessons that our children become more Principled people- which is an important element of the IB Learner Profile!  The children also played a board game that focused on finding Julius Caesar that they are bringing home with them tonight.  The children also went to french and drama classes.

Homework:  Read for 15 minutes and record in the reading chart, practice weekly spelling words, math page 184 - 185, Language page 154 - 155 and practice for history test next week.

Important information:  The children will be having a history test next Wednesday, May 18th, 2011.  This test will be to test their oral comprehension of the history chapter we read together as a class.  A good method for helping your child prepare and study for this test would be to ask them questions about the stories you are reading together over the next week.  Ask them to tell you what the beginning, middle and end of the story was, the main character's names, the places that were mentioned, etc.  This is an important skill that I believe we have been developing as a class over the school year so far. 

Please see my posting from yesterday about the upcoming concert.  I included some important information from Mrs. Deras about the role our class is going to have in play.  Our class is responsible for all the actions in the play.  The next whole-school practice period is tomorrow. 

Best regards,

Mrs. Nelson