Mrs. Ortega's Class
Welcome to our 2008-2009 webpage!
Take a look around, drop me a line, see what we're up
to!
Reading: We are nearing
the end of our first go-round of Literature Circles. We
are learning the process and getting better at it each time we
meet. There have been some great discussions during this time that
I hope continue into our next unit.
The books we are reading are "Julie of the Wolves", "The
River", or "The Egypt Game". Each student takes a different
job every time we meet and they are responsible for reading a
portion of the book beforehand as well. Once we've met, they take
some time and reflect on the discussion and ideas that were brought
up.
I am really enjoying myself AND I'm keeping up on the reading
in all 3 books too! That's tough!
Once we finish the books, we will be using our Daybook again
to do some work on Inference and we'll be spending a
little time looking at some WASL questions and answers.
Math: We are ALMOST
done with our Prime Time book!!! The Locker Problem is
the last step and we should be finished with that by early
next week. We've come a long way so far this year, but still have
much more to learn.
Our class will move into a unit called Shapes and Designs
soon. It deals with Triangles and Quadrilaterals and the
measurement of angles, perimeter, and area. There are many hands-on
activities that I am anxious to get to use so be watching for some
updates on that!
Language Arts: Our Christmas Around the
World projects are FINALLY done! With the two snow days right
before Christmas, we had to finish them up the first week back. I
was very impressed at the students that really put some time and
energy into their projects. I can tell they enjoyed what they were
doing and they took some real ownership in them as well.
At the moment we are writing a short essay on what we did over
Winter Break. It's about a page minimum and will be added to our
lovely portfolio project when they are finished.
Following the Winter Break essay, we are going to take a bit of
time to work on sentence and paragraph structure and summary
writing. Our next big writing project probably won't be until the
end of January when we summarize our learning for the
month.
Spelling is back! Students got their lists this
Wednesday and are hopefully studying away at home. The
first test will be this coming Tuesday. Some students
have showed great competence in their spelling skills and are
moving on up to the "Green Book" at the semester change.
Hooray!
Social Studies: We
are coming to a close with our Ancient Egypt study. How does
it go so fast? We've looked over the basic cultural elements of
Egypt so far and will wrap it up with lookin at some of the
famous pharoahs and queens who ruled Egypt. The final
test for this class will be January 20th. Study
up!
GO BEAVERS!!!
How about that 3-0 win over Pitt?
| 