Week 7.5 and 8

Reading

We finished our first set of novels and many students immediately wanted to read one of the novels that they didn't get a chance to read. We are taking a short break so the students can read a book of their choice, but never fret, after conferences we are diving into 2 great new books.More to come on that later. Over the past 2 weeks we have been working on identifying levels of questioning and thinking, comparing and contrasting characters, and annotating texts. The students worked with partners to read a story and annotate the text, they participated in musical shares and cats and fishes discussion forum. The students also used an online discussion forum called padlet while listening to the cats and fishes discussion. The students admitted it was hard to listen and write online, all they need is more practice and they will be pros at it. 

We had our first visit to Chapel View and met our "grandfriends" for the year. The students loved meeting the elderly and creating a Thankful Pumpkin for them. Our grandfriends thoroughly enjoyed the students visit and are already looking forward to our next visit. It really is the highlight of everyone's day and your children bring such joy to them it is overwhelms me each time I go. It's one of the reasons why I am selfish and why I won't give it up and let another class go.

Math

We finished up Unit 2 and moved on to Unit 3 Geometry. We have been reviewing names of angles and determining how many degrees are in equilateral triangles. We are now working on using a protractor to measure angles. I have no math pictures to share from the past weeks. Bad Mrs. B! The morning goes by so quickly and we go from one subject to another that the morning flies by like a whirlwind. I will work on this for next time.

Science

The students have been working in groups to perform a water tolerance investigation to see how the amount of water affects the growth of certain seeds. They have been observing and recording their data so they can determine what each seed can tolerate and what they prefer when it comes to water. The students became an "expert" about a biome by reading and taking notes. They then worked together with other students who studied the same biome and shared information and facts with one another. They then worked cooperatively to create a list of the top 5-10 facts about their biome. Finally they shared their expertise with the other students in their groups and learned many new facts about the biomes of the world.

October has been a little wonky with the short weeks for MEA and now conferences. Hopefully you and yours have been able to enjoy these beautiful fall weekends. My girls and I enjoyed our 2nd annual Mother-Daughter MEA camping trip to Nerstrand Big Woods State Park. Here we are taking, what I call, the new up selfie...

I look forward to meeting you later this week at your child's fall conference to discuss how they are learning and growing.

Week 6

Reading
The students were really digging deep this week to think critically and respond to questions about their novels in discussion groups. The students are reading Wringer, Pictures of Hollis Woods, The Boy Who Saved Baseball and Replay. We tweeted to Sharon Creech, the author of Replay, and the following day she had favorited our tweet. We are still waiting to hear back from her about the title of her next novel. The students were in awe that the author of a book they were reading was on twitter, that she saw our tweet and that she knows our class is reading her novel. 

The students have been participating in face to face discussions and last week we introduced the concept of online discussions using Moodle Forum. Miss Yesnes, our student teacher, taught a lesson on questioning and how to write thoughtful questions as you read. 

The students also learned this week how to activate their minds during reading by annotating the text using symbols and sticky notes. They were using their metacognition to make connections, draw conclusions, pinpoint important parts, ask questions, acknowledge when they were confused and point out vocabulary words that were unknown to them. Mrs. B modeled this while reading aloud The City of Ember and then students tried it on their own. We were blown away with their thoughtful and insightful annotations about the book's characters, setting, and plot.

Science
The students are becoming scientist and gardeners as we explore our Environments Unit. Each group planted a terrarium filled with barley, corn, pea, radish and clover seeds. The students are very eager each morning to check out their container to see what has sprouted and how the seeds are growing. This week they will measure their plants, decide how much to water and free their plants by taking off the cover.

On Friday the students started a new investigation that will determine what amounts of water are optimal for each seed. Hopefully they will see some changes before we leave for MEA break.

Digital Citzenship
Our focus was on the lesson by Common Sense Media titled Picture Perfect. The students watched this video which shows how an ordinary woman gets made to look like a "perfect" woman on a billboard. They then watched this video which shows how we see ourselves vs. how others see us. The thoughtful statements by the students were inspiring and brought a few tears to our eyes. We will continue talking about this important topic this week and look at how magazines fool us into thinking and believing what is not true or real.


Math
Math this week consisted of learning how to multiply using a variety of methods and figuring out which one worked best for each student. We learned how to multiply using partial products, (what I call) traditional, Lattice and Lattice plus (thanks to Moni's reminder). 

The students also tested their reaction times by trying to see how fast they could react to catch a falling piece of paper. They compared the results between their right and left hands to see what side had a faster reaction time. This week we will finish up unit 2 and test on Wednesday. After MEA break we will start Unit 3 which focuses on Geometry.

Week 5 - October

Last week we looked closely at food labels to determine whether or not they were a nutritious food filled with vitamins and minerals. The students' bright minds were able to determine what foods were more nutritious and were surprised to find out that a bottle of naked juice has more grams of sugar than a coke, even though the label says "no added sugar". On Friday we had Ms. E, the district's nutrition and wellness specialist, come to visit our classroom and inform us how they create the breakfast and lunch menu. She also shared that most of our food is made from scratch and comes from local farms. The students were eager to go to lunch and make their trays more colorful.  

In math we have been plugging away with Unit 2, which focuses on addition, subtraction and multiplication of whole numbers and decimals. We welcomed a handful of students from Mr. Davis' class and worked hard on our math journal pages, games and group activities. The students are working on memorizing their math facts by playing Shake, Rattle and Roll along with Safety Zone. We will be testing Unit 2 before MEA break and moving on to Unit 3, Geometry. It's hard to believe that we are almost done with our second unit already.

Our reading class jumped right in and started our first set of novels. The students were able to chose between Wringer, The Boy Who Saved Baseball, Replay and Pictures of Hollis Woods. The students are learning to manage their time and complete their reading assignments so they are ready for their group discussions. Our focus right now is on the exposition in each story where the author introduces us to the characters and their back stories along with the setting. We are also using our read aloud book, The City of Ember, to learn about exposition. 

We are now moving on to annotating a piece of text using specific symbols to help us think critically while reading. The students read an article about a student at the head of her class that was homeless and another article about Malala Yousafzai, who was shot by the Taliban for being a girl and going to school. These articles came from a wonderful online resource called Common Lit.

Last week we started our first science unit, Environments, and the students got their hands dirty by planting terrariums filled with corn, pea, radish, clover and corn seeds. I can't believe that I didn't take any pictures of the students planting, this week they will plant once again to see how water affects the growth of seeds.