CRAZY DAY!

Students and teachers had the opportunity to be crazy!!!

In Language Arts this week, we looked at similar story plots. We read "The Three Little Pigs" and "The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark". While we read these stories to the class, the students wrote notes on the story elements, characters, setting, problem and the solution.

The students are now in the process of writing their own "spin off" story. They began with a story plan, writing brief points about the elements of their stories.

We did some spelling practice in a fun activity called Scrabble Spelling. The students chose 10 words off our word wall and recorded the scrabble letter tile scores for each of the letters. They really enjoyed this spelling and math review!

Our study of Shel Silverstein continues! This week we read the poem "Tell Me". Students then wrote their own version of the poem.

\

We also did a Shel Silverstein activity called "Scrambled Egg". The students were given the poem "Not an Egg", with some of the words scrambled. They had to use the text in each sentence to try and figure out what the scrambled word was.

We have continued learning about multiplication and have started division. We also learned a new array game.

As an introduction to division, the students were shown how grouping can be used to divide and that grouping is used to solve problems when the total number of objects AND the number of objects in each group are known. The students experimented with cubes to make equal groups and then recorded their corresponding division sentence. They were also introduced to division story problems. Please help your child create a division story problem to share with the class on Monday.

In Social, the students have been working hard to complete their Ukraine brochures. They are looking great! We will have this project complete next week and will be flying to our last country, Peru!

In Science, the students were given an assignment to complete at home. They are to create a bridge to safely get their tribe off the island. We discussed with the students the requirements for this activity and are eager to see their creative ideas. Please help your child with this activity but allow them to complete the bulk of it. Please ask your child what items we brainstormed to be roughly 1kg and together with your child, use these items to test their bridge.

Their completed bridge and booklet are due on May 1st.

Ukraine Celebration!

We began our week with a celebration of Ukraine. The students enjoyed sampling some traditional foods including perogies, borscht, sauerkraut and sweet cabbage rolls (thanks to Milla's mom)!

The students also learned how to make pysanky using a kistka (pronounced keest-kah) and wax. Thank you to Mrs. Mirau and Mrs. Falkenberg for your help!

We also had a special guest presenter, Mrs. Falkenberg, who taught us some traditional Ukrainian dance steps.

We have finished reading and taking jot notes about Ukraine culture. Next week, we will start creating travel brochures.

We completed another survivor challenge. The students created shapes and learned how to reinforce these shapes to make them stronger. We found that reinforcing other shapes to make triangles, made the shape stronger.

We continued learning multiplication this week. We learned that multiplication is a short version of repeated addition. We practiced writing addition sentences and multiplication sentences to show how many objects were in equal groups. We also learned about arrays and how they can be used to show multiplication. The first number in a multiplication sentence tells the number of rows and the second number tells us how many are in each row.

3 X 4

4 X 3

When students completed their work, they played a new game called Multiplication War, using dominoes. 

They also learned a new game called "Penguin Multiplication". First one to get four "products" in a row, wins!

In Language Arts, we continued our study of Shel Silverstein. We read the poem Headphone Harold. 

Students were then given the same poem with some of the words missing. They were asked to substitute nouns, verbs and adjectives. They loved making their own silly version of the poem. They also had the opportunity to share them with the rest of the class. 

We learned about concrete poems and read "Circle Road". Student then created their own concrete poems, arranging the words in a shape to help convey the meaning of their poem.

This week, we also worked on writing persuasive paragraphs. We read the book "I am the Dog, I am the Cat". As a class, we brainstormed the advantages of having a dog or a cat as a pet. Students then worked on their own to create a paragraph, giving reasons and details to persuade the reader to buy their preferred pet.

For art this week, we wrote "I Wish" sentences, collected a twig from outside and made dandelions out of yarn. They assembled their project blowing "fluff" off of the dandelion, making their wishes.