We began our new read aloud this week. Together, we are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This book is at a higher reading level, so we will be spending more time talking about the vocabulary and context. We will also be working on fluency and accuracy by having the students read short paragraphs, switching back and forth between teacher and student to model.
We continued working on our All About Me writing this week. We began the good copy of our writing by typing them in a google document. Once the students had finished their typing, they edited their work for spelling, punctuation and changed the font and size. Then they shared their work with us. To complete their first topic, the students will be illustrating above the paragraph. There are many topics to choose from for this project and the students will be working through the paragraphs at their own pace now. We hope to see growth in their writing, including more complex and detailed sentences.
We completed a Making Words activity using the letters...
N, U, B, T, T. R, S, S, C, I, O
On their own, they worked on finding 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 letter words. They came up with so many words! Impressive!!! The mystery word was "SUBTRACTION".
In Math, we worked on subtracting from 100. To do this, you need to regroup from the hundreds before you can regroup from the tens. Following this practice, we worked on word problems where the students had to regroup.
To launch our Survivor unit we discussed what the expectations and rules of the island are...
- respect each other, self and the environment around you
- practice safety
- work cooperatively
- complete work on time
- put all materials back where they belong
Throughout the unit the students will be working through a number of challenges so we talked about what a fair test was. The class was given a short activity which didn't end up being fair for all students in our room. We talked about why the activity wasn't fair and what makes a fair test..changing only ONE factor (variable) for each test.
We have landed safely near shore and made our way to the closest beach. Ahead of us is a dense jungle and we see a huge storm heading our way, so we decide to make our way to find some shelter. As we reach the edge of the forest, we notice a large crack in the Earth. Nate takes a step forward to take a closer look. It is very deep and looks like it may have been caused by an earthquake. He tells us that he can not even see the bottom. There is also hot lava spewing from the crack. The crack is not too wide, but we definitely can not jump over it. We will need to build something in order to cross onto the other side. We have decided to make a foot bridge out of a piece of wood we see nearby. We need to figure out if bending the wood to make a square frame or bending it into an arch will be stronger. We need to remember that this structure needs to hold each classmate and teacher one by one as we step over the crack.
The "testable question" in this experiment was...will a square shape support more mass than an arch shape? The students were taught what a hypothesis was and needed to make one before completing the experiment as a tribe.
We were able to conclude that the arch shape held more mass than the square shape because the mass is spread evenly along the arch and there are no bends where the pressure would cause the shape to buckle.
Thank you for sending in kleenex boxes! The students starting painting their "Monster Valentine's Day" boxes and will finish by decorating them next week!
In Phys. Ed. we practiced for the upcoming "Skip-a-thon" and started a basketball unit, practicing dribbling and passing.
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