Week 2 back from break!

STARBASE

Many students have brought back permission slips for STARBASE, which is great!  Students should continue to bring in their permission slips if they have not already.  All forms need to be returned by January 22nd.  If you were not able to check out the video linked in last week’s blog post, here it is!

2016 Goals

We finalized our 2016 goals presentation and will be printing the slides out this week!  As we move through the rest of the year, we will revisit these goals, check-in, and see the progress we’ve made.

Math

Fractions have become our best friends!  Last week we began adding and subtracting fractions and learning to use common denominators.  To do so, we worked with fraction circles to visualize each addition or subtraction problem.  In our math 2 time, students played “Fraction Capture” with a partner. We will continue refining our addition and subtraction skills for fractions this week before taking our Unit 6 assessment on Friday.

Reading

Our students made adorable snowmen crafts with their grandfriends on Monday at Chapel View!

This week, we read a short story called “Podhu and Aruwa.”  It is an African Folktale about two brothers.  Students had the chance to think about their own relationships with their siblings or think about siblings they know to write about why siblings argue and solutions to those arguments.  We also discussed great readers make inferences while they read; students were asked to do so while reading the story.  I (Ms. Yesnes) read half of the story aloud and the students paired up to read the second half aloud with a partner or two.

Once students read the story entirely, they collaborated with one of their classmates in an interactive presentation created on Pear Deck.  They loved using the Chromebooks and participating in an interactive lesson, which is apparent by many of the smiling faces in the following pictures!

This coming up week, a guest teacher, Teresa Van Batavia, will be coming in to teach narrative writing and will be joining us until the unit is complete.  She is the literacy coordinator for K-6 grades; we are lucky to have her in the classroom!

Finally, students picked their new novels and began planning for our next novel study!

Science

Students finished their exploration of the Moai statues on Easter Island early in the week.  We then revisited our unit on Levers.  We were testing the amount of effort it took to lift a load along a lever arm.  Half of the class tested the effort needed when moving the load, while the other half tested the effort needed when moving the effort itself. (Ask your child about the lever vocabulary - he/she should know it like the back of his/her hand!)

Social Studies

Students became familiar with maps this week as they made diagrams of the classroom, as well as studied features of a global map.

Students also had the chance to watch a video about Martin Luther King Jr. and explore the History.com website about MLK.  They took notes about interesting, surprising, and important aspects about MLK’s life.