Owen had a great star week! He had his whole family come in for his star experiment, including his parents and his older brother and sister- Patrick and Annie! During his experiment, Owen got everyone thinking about how a submarine works. He put an empty 2 liter bottle in a bin of water, and we watched it float! Then he filled the 2 liter bottle with water, and we watched it sink to the bottom. We realized that a submarine can rise or lower itself in the ocean in the same way! What a cool experiment that was! Owen then read the children a story about Sponge Bob playing soccer in the ocean. The kids got a huge kick out of this story! The children all shared reasons that Owen is a star student- including he's funny, follows all of the rules at school, he's fun to play with, and he gets right to work every single day at school. That's a star in my book!
The children were troopers on another "assessment" Friday! They showed me what they know on their Spelling, Grammar, DOL, DOG, and Treasures assessments! The children played a quick round of spelling Sparkle before their spelling test, and Macy was our big winner this week! They also completed their Self Report Card for this trimester. It is so important for the children to think about their own strengths and weaknesses! I'm looking forward to sharing these with you at our conference coming up in the next few weeks. After lunch the children pulled out their Persuasive Posters to revise and edit. We are going to be transferring our ideas to our actual posters next week. We went to the library to finalize our Australian commerical scripts and to begin recording in front of our "green screens!" I loved to see how the children's persuasive thinking transferred right over to our social studies lessons. The children are doing a nice job of "selling" their ideas to their audience!
It was another great week at school. Looking ahead, next week is a Treasures Week 6, which is a review week as we lead up to our Unit 4 Assessment. We will review skills, vocabulary, and concepts throughout the week before the children take their unit assessment on Friday. The children will choose their own spelling words for the week, and there will not be a fluency passage.
Thank you for returning the Australian Animal contracts so quickly! I knew it was a tight turn around time, and I was amazed to see that EVERY SINGLE contract was returned by Friday! The children were very agreeable, too! Almost every single person received their top 1 or 2 animal choices. Given the opportunity to either double up on an animal or choose a new one for us to learn about, the children chose the new animal option! This means we are about to learn about 23 Australian animals that many of us know very little about! The kids are very excited about this research project! They love showing what they know to their classmates at school! Thank you for your help and support at home. These types of projects are the ones the kids really remember in the long run!
Thank you for all of your support and encouragement of your child's learning!
Have a wonderful weekend!
:) Miss O'Sullivan
We had PE today with Mr. Gries. We played basketball. We practiced dribbling and passing. In music, we learned the "Good Morning Song" with Mr. Deptula. We also played the hand chimes! In math we talked about Standard Units of Measure. We tried to measure the length of our class using 2nd graders, but we found that all of the 2nd graders are different sizes. When we only measured using Amelias, we came up with 9. When we measured with Alexes, we came up with 7 -because he is taller. We learned you have to use a standard unit of measure if you want an exact measurement! That way others will understand your measurement, too. During DOG, we each picked a country and then wrote down clues about where the country is in the world. We included clues about which hemisphere its in, other countries its near, which continent its on, and which bodies of water are nearby. 
