Week of April 14, 2008

WELCOME BACK!!!  We hope everyone had a wonderful spring break.

It is hard to believe that we are heading into our final six weeks of the school year.

We got a fresh start exercising our brains on two logic matrix problems and a perplexor.  Many of the students our becoming very strong analytical thinkers.

Our story this week was Thidwick the Big Hearted Moose.  We introduced our story by brainstorming what are attributes of a "big hearted" person.  When we completed the story we compared and contrasted the theme of this Dr. Seuss tale to several others we have shared.  Students completed a Venn diagram comparing Horton and Thidwick.   Thidwick had many "friends" living in his antlers, we connected this with the scientific concept of "symbiotic relationships".  We read a beautiful book called Weird Friends,  explaining and illustrating many symbiotic relationships in nature. After discussing the 3 different kinds of symbiotic relationships,  students determined what kind they thought Thidwick and his friends represented.  Our vocabulary words for the day were:  yank, obnoxious, forlorn, symbiosis.  Students completed the day making handprint antlers, and placing thumbprint animals in the antlers that would be mutually beneficial to Thidwick and the guest.

FYI:  NEXT WEEK IS CRCT WEEK.   WE WILL BE HAVING TARGET CLASS.  HOWEVER, DUE TO MORNING TESTING, WE WILL ONLY MEET FOR HALF A DAY.