First of all, congratulations on a successful Walk-a-thon this last week! Everyone looked like they were having a great time. Here's a recap of our week in Room 204.

Reading: This week we started reading Roald Dahl's Matilda in class.  This classic tale is filled with over-the-top characters lending themselves perfectly to our target reading comprehension skill, character analysis. Students used adjectives to describe specific character traits. They organized these adjectives into character webs in their reading journals.

Writing: We used the character maps from our reading as a pre-writing graphic organizers  for our writing. Students then drafted, revised, edited and published a one paragraph character analysis. As part of this analysis, students chose two traits from their webs upon which to expand. They used examples from the text to support their reasoning. We also discussed how the audience for the writing (Miss R) and the purpose of the writing (to report or to inform) influence the type of voice used in the writing (scholarly.) We spent considerable time discussing how to write an appropriately scholarly topic sentence and how to rephrase that topic sentence in order to chance it into a concluding sentence.

Math: We started a mini unit on geometry. Students learned how to define such concepts as parallel and perpendicular using the language of a mathematician. They continued using the language of a mathematician to define the attributes of quadrilaterals, parallelograms, rectangles, squares, and rhombuses. They used those attributes to look for relationships between the shapes. For example, they  learned how a single shape can fit the definition of a quadrilateral, a parallelogram, a rectangle, and a square.

Other:

• Again, thank you for all your support of the Walk-a-thon, both through your volunteering and your donations. The final results were announced this afternoon. Our class, sadly, did not reclaim the trophy despite our stellar athletic efforts. I am contemplating writing a firmly worded letter to demand a recount :-) I suspect there were hanging chads on the punch cards!
• #24's mother came into share about the PTA sponsored Art Contest, "Reflections." Last year, two eagles went on to represent our school at our the state level! Click here to be redirected to the PTA website with much more detailed information about the contest. I encourage all families to consider having their child enter this contest that gives students a chance to express their creative sides. Students, leave a comment at the end of this post telling me what ideas you are considering for Reflections.
• Book orders due no later than October 28th. I have a link at the top of the blog that will take you directly to the Scholastic website where you can order online. 
• Be sure to sign your child's responsibility chart and reading log.

Have a great weekend.

On a personal note that is totally unrelated to school and admittedly, shamelessly self-serving, I did complete my third full marathon in Victoria, BC  this past weekend coming in at 4:24:01, nearly six minutes faster than my goal time. The weather was simply gorgeous and this was by far the most enjoyable marathon I've ever run. All right, I'm done boasting. You can return to your regularly scheduled programming.