High Ability Update

Monday's anagrams really strained the students' brains! The challenging anagrams resulted in such great conversation. The vocabulary and spelling we discussed was excellent exposure for them. We definitely planted some seeds in their rapidly growing minds!

Homework: Read chapters 11-13 in Edward Tulane before Tuesday, February 21. Your student will likely need help with the reading. In class this week, we read and updated Edward's timeline. While all the students seemed to be following along in our timeline discussion as to what they needed to write down, I found only two of them were actually following along correctly and in a timely fashion. We move at a quick pace in here, so I encourage them to ask for clarification. Please speak to your student and encourage him/her to ask questions when needed. We will arrive at a comfortable pace for our journaling. They can help set the pace of our journaling by asking questions. I know communication skills can be hard at any age, so I'm trying to keep a very close eye on the situation. I'm so happy they are loving the book! It's a more mature read than Despereaux. Once we are done with this novel study, it'll be interesting to see which book they each prefer.

We began our fairy tale portion of our folklore study. The students added fairy tale to their folklore posters while we discussed the definition of fairy tale. Since the kids are mostly familiar with Disney fairy tales, I broadened their horizons to some classics. Our study of fairy tales will last several weeks. We will dive into fairy tales much deeper than we did the other types of folklore. The students are sure to love it!

Our last student presented his change maker biography. We started working on our first mystery, Miss Moneybags's Last Will and Testament. We know Miss Moneybags was single, because of being a miss not misses. We read her obituary, so students learned what an obituary is. We've discussed the purpose of a will. On the day of her death, Miss Moneybags updated her will, but the updated will was stolen within a couple hours! I explained what a beneficiary is, and we started to take a look at who may/may not be one of Miss Moneybags's beneficiaries. It's all very interesting!

Email: kapeterson@duneland.k12.in.us
Location: Jackson Elementary School, North 400 East, Valparaiso, IN, USA
Phone: 219-983-3680