What an Excellent Inquiry Presentation!

Prehistoric Times Inquiry Presentation
Your young paleontologists impressed their audience, including parents, students from Ms. Byrne’s 3/4 class, and Mrs. Hussey with their confidence, visual aids, enthusiasm, and expertise at our Prehistoric Times Inquiry Presentations yesterday. Mrs. Hussey described their performance as “excellent,” and everyone was very enthusiastic in their praise of the children’s efforts. It was the perfect culmination of a semester of learning, creating, and collaborating. Thank you for all the support you gave us by helping the children with note-taking in the classroom, assisting your child in practicing their reports, and sending in so many fascinating items to enrich our study! Be sure to check the Photo Gallery for photos of the presentations.

Portfolio Reflections
The children have been busy reflecting on their learning for their portfolios and conferences. With the help of the 2nd Graders, Ms. Brianne, and myself, the 1st Graders are learning how to write thoughtful reflections of what they have achieved and what they want to work on in the future.

Excursion
On Friday, December 15, we will join Mrs. Bailie’s class for an excursion to the Bishop Museum to see a special, interactive dinosaur exhibit. This will be the perfect way to wrap up our Prehistoric Times Inquiry study. Look for details next week.

Reminders
There will be no school for the children tomorrow, Friday, December 1. This is a Conference preparation day for the teachers. Conferences will be held on Thursday, December 7, and Friday, December 8, so there will be no school for the children on those days either. Be sure to check your conference time and try to come a few minutes early to have a look at your child’s portfolio. Your child needs to be at the conference to talk about their progress and goals.

Homework
Many of the children did not realize there is no school tomorrow, so they did not bring their Homework Folders today. The children may bring their folders on Monday, December 4, and we will have the Spelling test on that day.

Christmas Sale
Our Christmas Sale will be on Tuesday, December 12. The class came up with great ideas for products and services and created a questionnaire for the Kinders and 1/2 classes in order to do market research. The overwhelming choices were homemade chocolate, chocolate chip ice cream cones (Yum!), and mochi. Our real-life math literacy lessons included marking and counting tally marks, counting by 5s and 10s, figuring out the fraction of classes that had not completed the questionnaire, and graphing our results (line and bar). We will also figure out our profit when we subtract our start-up costs from what we take in. In addition, we will be making change at our shops and counting the money we intend to give to a charity for Christmas. It is a wonderful learning opportunity!

Remember that the children will be allowed to bring only $5.00 to the sale and that the sale is for Kindergarten and 1/2 children only. Thank you for your support of our project!

Posted on November 30, 2006 3:44 PM | Permalink