Frosty Friday

  

Brr.. it is a good day for a nice cup of hot chocolate.... I like mine with lots of yummy marshmallows! As we near our winter break, we need to keep our minds busy, so we can stay on track. Here is what we have been up to this week!

Language Arts

First grade: Anagrams
 We read the book The Great Show and Tell Disaster by Mike Reiss.  This a a really funny book about a boy named Ned and an invention he made for show and tell. His contraption changes everything! It makes limes smile and makes his Aunt a big Tuna! Best of all he changes his teacher ( Mrs.Eton) into a MONSTER!! We looked at all the words in the story that were anagrams...the kids were amazed at how many new words you can make! We learned what the word COLOSSAL means since it was a new word for us when we read the story. We talked about vocabulary words and using the dictionary to find the meaning of an unknown word. . I introduced the concept of a vocabulary map.  We talked about how to fill our the map using the online  dictionary.  The students did a great job on the vocabulary map , and I was excited to see that they already knew several parts of speech. They figured out that the word COLOSSAL was an adjective. We also listened to a song on youtube called GRAMA AN'S ANAGRAMS. They wanted to listen to it over and over, and they even got up and danced to it before class was over.

Second grade:  Metaphors:  We started this week by looking at an excerpt the author included at the beginning of our story.

.The Testing Tree

The heart breaks and breaks

and lives by breaking

It is necessary to go

through dark and deeper dark

and not to turn.
 We decided it was a metaphor to Edward's Journey.. The question was why did they think our author included it?  Some of the students quickly came up with the idea of it being a metaphor to our entire story.  We  took some time to look at some other metaphors and how they related to our story. We will continue to look at more metaphors on Monday before we finish our novel.

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3rd Grade:  Jane Goodall:
This week in class we started by reading excerpts from Jane Goodall's autobiography My Life with Chimpanzees.  We briefly reviewed the difference between a biography and autobiography.  After reading each excerpt, it was our job to identify the interaction that took place, decide if it met our interaction criteria, look for any character traits and  identify any fact or opinions. 

 Before starting this project, we discussed the difference between a fact and opinion.  They did a great job at spotting the facts, but it was harder for them to identify the opinions. Around the room, I placed more excerpts from our story.  

While visiting each station they would read the excerpt and complete a chart answering questions to each reading.  We answered one excerpt together.  They must identify the interaction and fill it in, in a complete sentence.  Then they must answer the 3 requirements to an interaction - marking what one applies to each of the interactions. Was it purposeful/accidental, positive or negative, fleeting or long lasting?

Fourth graders were amazing this week. They have all turned in their works cited pages, and are starting to dig for those ten events for their timelines. Great job! Keep up the good work!
 

Math

First grade: Spatial Visualization
We are finishing up our lesson this we have been working on for a couple of weeks. These students are experts at finding the number of vertices and sides in a shape. They are rock stars at using the geometry terms as well!  This week we worked on our Think Deeply portion of the lesson. They are unwilling writers, but do a great job analyzing the question and answering in steps.



     Second grade: Tesselations
 
 The students continued working on the lesson of tessellations or tiling. We have flipped, turned and slid shapes to see how we can make different patterns. The students did a great job with this concept. We worked it out on the white board before I let them fly on their own. They rocked this activity! We then moved on to making patterns using one shape. The students struggled a bit getting started because they were not making the shapes touch sides. Once they figured this out, they were off and running. We will continue to work on our wall murals next week, and we will be having our chapter 1 review.

   
 
 
 
 

 

 
 
   
  Third grade: What's next patterns


Due to early dismissal on Thursday, we were only able to  meet once this week. They worked hard for me on the first Think Deeply question. The students all got confused over the first term being 52 when they started with 57. The issue was that they were off by 5 on their answer. When one group finally figured it our, they quickly shared with the other groups.
We will be having our chapter 1 review next week.

Fourth grade- Think and Beyond

This week we worked on the enrichment portion of our lesson. This group loves to be challenged, add did a great job as usual . We also played a fraction spiral game to continue to review our basic fraction knowledge. For the next two weeks, we will be taking a break from the fractions and working on some logic puzzles. It will be a challenging experience for them, but a welcome break to our usual curriculum. We will resume our fraction lessons in January after our winter break The kids all enjoyed listening to some Christmas songs while they worked.


Christmas trivia


Name all of Santa's reindeer.... put them in alphabetical order and turn it in for a sweet surprise!

Mrs.P