Welcome to Mrs. Duncan's

Dendrites!

Since the children are so eager to learn, I thought dendrites was an appropriate name for our web page.  This pasage from Your Miracle Brain by Jean Carper might help in understanding dendrites. "Just in the last decade, the concept of a "fixed forever" brain has been abandoned.  Pioneering research has proved the ever-changing nature of the brain:  Brain cells continually produce new dendrites and receptors, grow new synapses, or communication junctions, and alter the essence of the neutransmitter soup that stimulates brain activity.  It's now known that brain cells can sprout new dendrites and new synapses, forming new comunication networks at any age!  Even adult grains can grow new cells!"

C.C. Wright's theme for this year is Passport to Adventure.  Each child has a passport.  Smiley face stamps are added to the passports each day for attendance and completed homework.  A thumbs up stamp is awarded for Excellent Eight behavior.  On June 4th,  any child having 100 smiley stamps can attend a Carnival full of prizes, games and fun.  Extra prized will be given to children who earn more than 100 smiley stamps or have thumbs up stamps.  Children, be sure to come to school every day and do your homework!

We are excited because we had 100% in the return of our I Care forms for last month!  This was our first time ever! The children were rewarded by Mrs. Duncan and Mrs Norman!  New forms just went out and we made 100% again!  I knew we could do it!  I know we can keep this up.  Go TIGERS!

For homework, each child is to read the DRA book in their red reading folder each evening and study spelling words for the week.  Along with the spelling words, the children have vocabulary words to learn.  Extra points are awarded for spelling these words correctly.  We are proud to say that every week, most test grades are more than 100 points! We have fun learning the meanings by playing Blurt.  The children incorporate these words into their writing to replace over-used words. Check out the password outside our door each day.  Upon entering, each child is to say the word and the meaning.  Each child is expected to earn the assigned Reading Counts points for the grading period. I want every child to be able to enjoy the reward.  The rest of our homework includes math homework that is put in the folder on Monday and it is due on Friday.

 Science is always fun. We are studying the three forms of matter.  After popping popcorn, we made ice cream! We placed an ice cream mixture in small baggies and then placed them into large baggies filled with rock salt.  the children had fun passing arouond the bags and shaking them.  Soon we had ice cream!  The tock salt took heat from the ice and made it get colder and thus the ice cream formed!  It was delicious!

Soon we willl be studying the life cycle of the butterfly.  In the meantime, Mrs. Duncan ordered an ant farm.  We hope to have our ants soon.

In math we are working on three ring venn diagrams, telling time, adding and subtracting with regrouping and making pictographs.  The children have found that pictographs are an appealing way to display data.  We made a pictograph about the tastes of colored twizzlers.  YUM!  We enjoy using the SmartBoard for a koosh ball game.  The children throw a koosh ball at colored circles.  When a circle is hit, an addition or subtraction problem appears.  The children have the choice of the two digit problem or one in the thousands or tens of thousands! The harder, the better seems to be the choice! Of course, we love to play in teams and earn tickets for Friday's auction.