Manoa Mountains News for February 21, 2008

The Manoa Mountains would like to thank all of the families who sent in Valentine's Day treats last week and/or supported the "Jump Rope for Heart" fundraiser for the American Heart Association. The students received their jump ropes and stickers yesterday for their participation in the event. They should still be practicing their jump rope skills daily since that is their PE unit for now.

Plans for the opera are taking shape, and our class will  be designing the official program with Mrs. Lorenzana's class. They have been learning the story and songs for the opera in music class with Mrs. Koshi.

We have also been discussing our impressions of how Manoa valley looked one hundred years ago and how the Hawaiians lived here. We will be going on a field trip to Manoa Falls and Waikiki in April to continue our studies.  Mr. John Clark (SC's dad) will help us plan our tour and provide leadership on this educational journey.

The book report projects are due for presentation on Monday, and we will begin at 10:00 AM in our classroom.  Guests may park in Wilcox Circle for the presentations. We hope to see many parents and grandparents join us for this project sharing.

Our Literature Circle work is getting better and better. The Manoa Mountains are answering the comprehension questions with greater clarity and have drawn detailed plot pictures of the stories. Their reports indicate that they have a good understanding of what they have read. Their vocabulary work is also well done. They learn fifteen new words every week, and many are using the words in their stories for Writer's Workshop.

We have published some stories for Writer's Workshop and will be sharing them from the Author's Chair next week. Everyone is trying to get one story published this month. The stories are then made into books with special designs and illustrations on the cover.

Our daily reading continues to challenge us with interesting books, and many are doing a very nice job on their Reading Log entries. Their summaries and response choices are more detailed and express their understanding of what they have read. It is fun for me to read their entries every week, and I appreciate the care that goes into every
report.

Our math continues to challenge us every day. The third graders are working with multiplication, and the fourth graders are doing lots of problem solving. Everyone is doing a good job of keeping up with corrections. Soon we will send the Unit 4 work home.

We are working hard on our test-preparation books and have become accustomed to the multiple choice format. We are making good choices for our answers and carefully coloring in the circles for our selected answers.  The third graders are also working on their D'Nealian Handwriting books and learning to write in cursive.

Our Language Arts lessons have helped us to learn about nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. We will continue to expand our knowledge of the parts of speech and their proper usage.

Posted on February 21, 2008 6:11 AM | Permalink