I have a break during conferences so I thought I'd update for this week. On Friday, students were to have turned in an expository about a place that is special to them. This was the first expository in which I did not assist them through the process. I still offered a timeline of what needed to be done on different days, but all of the planning, writing, revising and editing was done independently. I will be grading these this week to get a better idea of your child's understanding of the writing process and determine which steps, if any, still need teacher support or reteaching. Overall, the students have come such a long way this year becoming independent and truly using the resources they have been given throughout the year.
This week we will be doing a series of quick writes, which consist of 1/2 to 1 page of a response to a prompt. Rather than go through the entire writing process, these quick writes capture a writer's natural writing skills and deficits as he/she doesn't have time to revise and rewrite for clarity. In addition to these quick writes we will be working on possessive nouns, both singular and plural VS contractions. We will also continue learning about homophones with a specific emphasis on to, too, and two. I'll be introducing a website this week for which I currently have a free trial period of 2 weeks. It's called Flocabulary. It uses kid friendly songs/lyrics to help teach some of the trickier concepts like possessives as an extra tool for learning. Daily we are working through Countdown to STAAR for practicing revising and editing questions like the ones they will see on the writing STAAR test. Thank you for your help at home overseeing or assisting your child in working on the 5 Minute TEKS practices due each Friday.
In Social Studies, we are finishing up our study on Texas missions and learning about how the pueblos (or villages) gave way to the first American settlers in Texas. The students will learn about empresarios and "The Old 300."
If you were unable to make a conference time and still wish to meet, please email me so that I can set up a meeting for us.