Week 2, What we have been up too...

Hi there friends! Its been a while since I last posted and I do apologise for that. The start up of the year is always a crazy time at The Academy, and I've pretty much lost a lot of sleep and grew a few grey hairs. Now that we have delved into the second week of school, it's good to see the school year starting to meld together.

This is my first year back in fourth grade after being in third for four years. I'm pretty excited as it means I have more teaching time in English and Science.

Our first back mainly consisted of back to school stuff, but I was really eager to get that past so I can get into the nitty gritty of teaching.

I'm definitely loving my new class this year. They are extraordinarily calm and insightful and its great going up a grade with them.

This week, we started off our Reading Street unit, Patterns of Nature. We only picked selected stories from each unit.

The kiddos read the selection in two lessons. Since our comprehension skill is fact and opinion, we did a lot of work on differentiating the two. Afterwards, we made a fact map about what we learnt on Grey Whales and listed the facts and opinions from the story.

If you would like a copy of the worksheet, you can download it here. 

In Science, we have started looking at cells and classification. We are also using the Scotts Foresman Science books which I find a bit dry. I managed to get the Senior School to allow us to use the video microscope to look at plant and animal cells.

The kiddos really enjoyed this as it was the first time they got to use a microscope.  I projected a sample of the onion cell and an animal cell on the board and the kids made some observations.

Before they started, we talked about using our five senses to make observations in Science. I posted an anchor chart on making observations to help them with their write-up.

I hope you are all have a good week at your schools! Happy Days!