5th and 6th Grade MUR:
This week we continued our study of Dragonwings. We spent a lot of time discussing the steps one takes when making new friends. We used these ideas to compare how Moon Shadow and his father became friends with the Whitlaw's and through this friendship both parties where able to break down the walls of prejudice, overcome cultural misconceptions and find common ground in being human.
This concept paired nicely with our Spelling/Vocabulary lesson for the week. We began with the Latin phrase "Humani nihil a me alienum puto." "I think nothing human is alien to me." As we continued our study of All or Nothing, students were able to relate this weeks spelling words to our novel study.
3rd and 4th Grade MUR:
This week we read the Russian folktale "The Little Humpbacked Horse." As this was a very long story it took us most of the week to read. We will move into our question and discussion session next week.
We began a new lesson this week, writing quality topic sentences. We spent much of Thursday's class looking at what makes up a quality topic sentence. Students made a "do" list to help them create quality sentences. We discussed how to use a thesaurus and what type of words one should interchange to help build our vocabulary. This was a new adventure for our 3rd and 4th grade students. We will continue to work on this skill through out the year.
In Spelling/Vocabulary we worked on Wordly Wise lesson 4. The student's are showing tremendous progress in this area and even identifying their words in literature and around the classroom.
