Free time Friday!

  What a nice surprise to get to sit in my pj's and sip hot chocolate with my daughter Abby while I work on my blog this morning! Stay warm and enjoy this bonus day off, and remember there is no school on Monday, January 15th due to it being records day! We have been working hard this week in High Ability, stretching our brain muscles!
 
First grade- Lipograms

The kids enjoyed learning about the pie cipher this week. Letters are placed on a pie and then the message to be deciphered is on the pieces with corresponding dots for letters. They picked up really quickly as to how this cipher worked, and had the message figured out in a short time period. The message was" The letter E is used most often when we write."    We  also started learning about Lipograms this week. Lipograms are a piece of writing in which one letter is left out, Lipo means lacking, and gram means letter. It is fun to play with language and see how words change when you leave a letter out or replace it with a different on We started by reading Jack and Jill. We then took out the letter E from every word. We then had to think really hard about the words that would mean the same thing.. We also had to think of words that were past tense because Jack and Jill had already went up the hill to get that pail of water.  The kids found this a bit challenging.

   We also learned that letter E is used in the English language 12.702%. Why just in this paragraph I have used the letter E  106 times... WOW!!!! We also read a book called E-mergency by Tom Lichtenfeld where letter E gets hurt and had to be replaced by the letter O. The book was great to show the kids how many words have the letter E in them, and how difficult it can be to read the text with different letters in it its place.

Second graders- Edward follow up

We are continuing our discussion about Edward and will continue with activities to follow up our novel study for a few more weeks. This week we revisited Edward and his character traits. At what point in the book was he selfish? When did he become tenderhearted?
We also revisited our journals and did more journal entries about the novel now that we are finished reading. This was thought provoking as they went through the prompts. The student  thought about Edward and his character traits from the beginning of the novel and then how he had changed over the course of his journey. They have now figured out why his journey was miraculous. Most have picked up on how unlikely it is to be reunited after that amount of time with the ones you love,  
Third graders- Jane Goodall
Due to a field trip we only met on Monday. We looked at several quotes from Jane. We talked about what they meant. Then the students chose one quote and wrote about a time in their lives that they had a similar experience. This was difficult for many in my small group. We will have a few minutes next class to revisit and write more.

Fourth graders- Timelines

These girls have kicked into high gear! They were assembling their timelines today and will have next week to finalize and glue down the final product. Great job ladies!

Math

First graders- Turn, Turn, Turn....

 We started our new chapter this week. We are learning a new game by Imi and Zani called Turn , turn, turn, This game is going to help us learn about angles. We looked at the big polygon shapes this morning. We talked about a new tool we can use to help us find out the angles of shapes, called a protractor. We talked about how a protractor works by using two rulers and finding the vertex of a polygon, we can find out if the polygon has a small angle(acute), a medium angle(right) or a large angle(obtuse). We looked around our classroom to find angles of each type. We figured out there are more right angles than acute or obtuse in obtuse.

right angle

obtuse angle

 acute angle

 

Some pics from our I spy an angle in our room!

 

 

 

 

 

Second grade-Think deeply

We talked about our wall murals that we made before winter break. We then filled out our think deeply sheet, while coming up to the white board and filling in the talk frames, and finally we could answer the question by writing that "We understand you can make tessellations with shapes by sliding, flipping and turning the shapes."  We then did a quick project where we made our own tessellations. Moving on next week to making 3-D shapes!

Third grade-Hundreds charts

This week we worked on finding patterns on a hundreds number chart. We started by filling in the chart by finding multiples of two. We discussed how you can figure out if a higher number is even by looking at the last number. If the last number ends in 2,4,6,8, or 0 then it is an even number.  We can also find that numbers placements on the chart by that number as well.  On Thursday, students worked in pairs filling in hundreds charts for the multiples of 3,4,5,6,7,8,9,and 10. The students had some difficulty with this; thinking that it was the digit with the same number at the end. However, when I was walking around checking on them and I pointed it out, it did not take long until they all started figuring out the patterns for each number. When finished they got to come up and check their work to see if they have the correct pattern,  They all told me when they saw the hundreds chart that this was going to be super easy, and ended up challenging each and every one! We will continue working on this next week!


Fourth grade- Peppermint candy counters

We have started a new lesson this week where we are comparing fractions with like denominators and like numerators. Students  looked at number lines and how to use benchmarks like 1/2,1, and 2 helped them find where our fraction would be placed on the timeline.They used their knowledge of how we made the fraction strips at the beginning of the year to help them compare the fractions. They know that the fraction strip of thirds had much larger sections than a strip of twelfths. 
They then took this knowledge to start  playing a game called fraction hang-ups. In this game I had the students play against each other since we only have three students, Each student made their own fraction line and had  to put them in order from least to greatest, We only got to play one time this week, so I will have them add to their timelines next week.


Reminder: There is no school on Monday, January 15th due to records day.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. P.