Nov. 24-26:              Thanksgiving Break!

LANGUAGE ARTS

1^st Grade:  On Monday we began composing a persuasive writing.  The question I poised to the kids was, “Do you believe all First graders should learn Pig Latin”.  As a class the kids voted, and after some discussion, the majority agreed that all First graders should learn to speak Pig Latin.  We talked about using a hamburger organizer and we sang the hamburger song to the tune of “Mary Had a Little Lamb”.  The song tells the kids that they can persuade a reader by using this method.  The top bun is the opinion.  The middle patties give the reasons why we should agree.  The bottom bun tells what we said before. Since our week was cut short by at home learning, we will finish our persuasive writing on Monday.

2^nd Grade:  We continued our journey with Despereaux by discussing the girls’ predictions, thoughts and questions.  We talked about the timeline and how, at times, each book overlaps.  After our discussion we filled out a vocabulary web with the word ominous. We looked up synonyms and antonyms, the part of speech, and its origin.  The girls also wrote a sentence that included the word.  They will be working on their own vocabulary web next week.  For Monday, I assigned chapters 29-33. 

 

3rd Grade:  On Monday I read the kids Johnny Appleseed to open a discussion about tall tales.  We discussed that tall tales are exaggerated but can sometimes be based on real events.  They also have morals and include unbelievable elements that are told as if they are real and factual.  We will continue discussing tall tales next week when we fill out a vocabulary web and then fill more in on our Folklore poster.

 

 4th Grade:  We continued with our biography study Monday when the kids used the entire class to research their historical change maker.  They looked through multiple books to learn more about how these people influenced change and during which dates in history. 

                        MATH

1^st Grade:  The kids finally got to play GRUPO on their own!  We went over the rules again and I set them free to play the game.  I helped by walking between the two groups. Occasionally there was a little confusion, but we quickly figured things out.  They are supposed to find two matching cards but once a couple of them noticed that they could find three that fit together, I told them, “Absolutely you can take all three cards!”  The next day the kids used their Grupo knowledge to look at a Grupo shape and compose their own shape by following Grupo rules.  The kids were given a worksheet that contained two Grupo cards. They needed to compose a shape that would make a Grupo match to one of the cards.  They voted on which shape to work with and almost all of them chose the hexagon.  They played with shapes to see if they could make their own hexagon that would be a Grupo match.  This was hard because they had to not only make a hexagon, but the composition of the hexagon had to either contain the same number of shapes inside as the Grupo card or the same type of shapes inside.  They all struggled at first and it took some fiddling but eventually they all figured out what was needed to make a Grupo shape match.  We then voted on one shape to make and attach. 

2^nd Grade:    The kids practiced tesselating shapes on a grid.  They each had a large bag of shapes and we started by looking at each shape within the bag.  We reviewed the names of the shapes; hexagon, rhombus, triangles, trapezoid, and square, and then they were given a pattern worksheet.  I asked the kids if all the shapes worked on the grid and they decided that some did not.  Once the kids played around with the shapes, they were asked to find a pattern of two or three shapes that could be slid, rotated or flipped to fill the entire grid. I took a picture of each kid’s pattern and we will continue this next week.

3rd Grade:  We continued working with our hundred charts and the boys colored mini hundreds charts to show multiples of twos through tens.  The goal was for them to recognize patterns of the multiple.  They needed to figure out how the numbers relate.  Yes, they have a visual pattern, like multiples of two make vertical columns but they were also asked to figure out how the numbers themselves relate to each other.  

4th Grade:  We finished up the Think Deeply for last weeks variable puzzles.  When they completed, they delved into a Zaccarro worksheet. With each worksheet they do increasingly difficult algebra problems.  Many of them are on the genius level.  The kids are absolutely loving these worksheets!  They get so excited when they discover how to do a problem.  When certain kids finished, they even walked around and helped the other kids with solving problems they are stuck on.