Hey, Hey, it's Friday!

Happy Friday!  Sometimes it seems to me that the breaks in our schedule only prolong our week. This week was definitely one of those weeks. I am hopeful that we are done with the snow days and can get back to business as usual!

It was a short week in Language Arts with only one day of class due to records day on Monday.

First grade- lipograms
We talked more about what happens when you take a letter out of the word. We looked for synonyms (words that mean the same as) to replace the word in our sentence.Then we made a secret code of our own using the spy pie cipher. My favorite code was deciphered into "I am really sleepy." 
Important news for First graders: In two weeks we will be sorting stuffed animals. Your child will receive an invitation to bring theirr favorite stuffed friend attend HA Math class! Keep an eye out for the invitation! 
Also due to CogAt testing, there will be no HA class for first grade LA or Math the week of Jan 29-Feb 2nd.  Thank you for your understanding .
Second grade- Socratic seminar
We started our Socratic Seminar on Tuesday.  We went over the concept before jumping in.  In a socratic seminar, students form two circles (inside and outside).  Those on the inside are sharing their thoughts and ideas from the story.  I give them a topic from the story to talk about and they share.  If they get stuck, it's up to the outside to prompt them and get them back on track.  Those on the outside are listening.  They have a sheet to record thoughts they hear. On this sheet they are to write down two  star things they heard that were great!  One is a wish of something they wish they had heard.  We will next switch the circles and repeat this time with new questions.  For their first time, I thought they did an great job! 

Third grade- comparing texts

We began reading two books that are biographies of Jane Goodall.  We started with Me...Jane by Patrick McDonnell.  We will read the other text next week titled The Watcher by Jeanette Winter, and then compare the texts using a T chart. This chart is similar to the Venn Diagram they have used in the past when making comparisons, however; the T chart compares specific parts of the texts, like the illustrations, content, emotions, cover of the books etc.


Fourth grade- timelines
This week we put finishing touches on our timelines. We have Monday to finish up a few loose ends. Then we will be moving on to writing our monologues.


Math this week:
 
First graders-finding angles

We only got one day of HA math this week due to our 2 our delay on Wednesday. We went on a school scavenger hunt for angles. The boys had a great time finding acute , right and obtuse angles around the building.

Second grade- 2D and 3D shapes

We delved right into our new lesson this week. We touched base with Dru and Tellerr to see what we would be learning about in this lesson. This lesson is going to be messy and all hands on deck as we are going to be making bubble 3D shapes. We started by doing a grab bag activity. Students  got to take turns feeling  in the bag and tell the diffences between the shapes. Then they would pull them out and we would learn how they were alike and different. We talked about how 2D shapes are flat and have no depth or thickness. We then talked about how 3D shapes have vertices, faces, and edges. We pointed out the vertices, edges and faces of each 3D shape.
We then built some 2D shapes using straws and pipe cleaners.

Third grade: hundreds charts

We reviewed the patterns on the whiteboard of the multiples of each number, and how they are different. They noticed that the multiples of 2,5,and 10 all were in specific columns, while the multiples of 3 are in diagonal lines.

Fourth grade-Fraction hang ups
We took some time to review over what we learned last week with fractions having common numerators or denominators, using a benchmark on a number line, and missing pieces of information in fractions.  We then played our fraction hang ups game one time. They enjoyed the challenge of higher numbers and then finding out where they would be positioned on the number line.
We then moved on to candy counter.  and candy bag capers where they had to work in pairs and use the strategies of comparing with common numerators and denominators as well as using a benchmark  or other visual models to help them figure out the weight of candy in the bags. After they solved the problem they were  prompted to explain which strategy they used and why.

Happy Birthday to Eva!