~Fun Fall Friday~
Hello! Our classes are still focusing on our monthly theme of Just Keep Swimming. This week we discussed the quote “Today is a good day to try.” This led several of my classes to discuss that every day is a new start or beginning. We can begin each day with our best effort to make it a great day. Every day becomes a great day as long as we gave it our best effort! Due to the shortened week and not meeting all of my friends we will not have a weekly quote for our contest this week - we will keep focusing on a positive attitude in the classroom
Due to a short week next week for Thanksgiving Break, I will not meet with my math groups. I remembered to wish all of my math friends a Happy Thanksgiving and want to wish their parents one too. It feels crazy to say this cause the year is flying by, but when my math friends return we will be into December! I will meet with all of my language art groups next week and I will post the blog with all of our events from the week.
Next week I will share with you are last set pictures from our leaders in the room.
LANGUAGE ARTS
1st Grade: Silly Speak - Guess My Connection: This week we are taking what we learned from our lesson on Pig Latin and adding a new element with our opinions. We decided that our opinion is our point of view or feelings towards something. This led us into a discussion on persuading our friends to share our opinions. The students told me that to persuade someone means to convince them to share your opinion. I asked the students the question “Should all first graders learn to speak Pig Latin?” It was interesting to see that some of our students who liked Pig Latin do not believe all students should learn it. We used this topic to learn the Hamburger Model for writing a paragraph. As a class, we filled out a model with our introduction, details and conclusion.
On Tuesday, we took our model we made with our ideas and I showed the children how to turn it into a paragraph. When making our paragraph we quickly reviewed capital letters and ending punctuation. When we were finished we read our paragraph we made together. Next, we looked at a rubric for persuasive writing and compared it to our model we made. The children were told this is something we will use at a later time in class - when it will be their turn to persuade me!
2nd Grade: Connecting by Asking Questions: This week we worked together to complete three organizers we will use to help us keep our thoughts in order while working through our novel. Each student has a paper to organize the characters they meet and use some adjectives to describe them. They have a paper that allows them to track the setting as it changes throughout the story and use a sentence to explain what happened at this time. Lastly, they have a paper to organize Edward’s feelings as we see him change throughout the story. We used these papers in class this week to lead us in a discussion of what took place in chapters 5 through 7. 
On Tuesday, they completed a paper to put a list of events in order from 1-10. As we complete a set of chapters, the students will complete an activity that helps them understand their reading further. This helps them develop the skill of reading for meaning and a deeper understanding of the events in a book. To end the day, we read chapter 8 together as a class. We then began to look back at our predictions and share some of them - leading the class in a discussion of what changed from our original thoughts. We will work further with our predictions next week.
3rd Grade: Fables as a Genre: To start the week we finished up our journey with the Edmond Fitzgerald. I asked the students to take the chart they made from last week and as the expert write me a letter convincing me of their findings. After, they submitted their letters to me we took some time to review sentence structure and paragraph format. Together we went back and broke down their letters and revised them. We compared our first draft to our final draft to look at the differences we made. We ended the day being introduced to Fables. They read “The Ants and the Grasshopper” and decided that our next focus would be a fable.
On Tuesday, we came in and discussed “The Ants and the Grasshopper.” We wrote down some the of the elements that define a fable as we discussed the story. This led us to define a fable as a story that has been handed down over a period of time with talking animals. We also decided the purpose of the fable is to teach us a lesson or a moral. We analyzed the lesson we learned from our first fable and the students were surprised to find out that in such a short story we learned so much information. Then the came read “The Jay and the Peacock.” We then began to look at a reading analyzer and practiced filling it out together with this story. We focused on the main idea of the analyzer because this is where we will see the author’s purpose or lesson from the fable. We will continue to work with our reading analyzer next week.
4th Grade: Change Makers: This week we took some more time to go over the biography project with the students. Looking at the chart they received in Google Drive and comparing it with their steps to the project. Together, I showed them how the steps are broken down into multiple areas so that they are breaking it down into smaller assignments verse one large project. This will also help them with time management. As we worked through the steps, they were able to view the documents also shared with them that correlate with each step. By next week, the students will have completed steps one and two. As I mentioned from last week, from now to February the students will have class time work on this project. When a certain deadline is approaching we may have a mini-lesson on what is required and how to complete it - an example this week we talked about determining a credible source for next week’s deadline on resources selected. We will incorporate mini lessons throughout the project to guide them through the steps.
On Tuesday, we talked further on credible sources. This was to help them while they are selecting their materials for their project. They should have 2 to 3 resources to show me for class by next Tuesday - November 22. Please make sure the students are working on their projects at home as well as in the classroom. I had some students come to class and not have their person selected. This is a project that they will need to incorporate class time and home time to complete. I appreciate your help in this project.
MATH
1st Grade: It’s Heavy - A Bag of Pennies: We heard back from our friends Imi and Zani and they have asked for our help again. They have asked us to come up with another measuring task. To add a challenge from our previous task on weight we decided to look at weight in groups of three. This introduced two new terms to the class : heaviest and lightest. The students learned that when we are comparing 2 items we would still use the terms heavier and lighter, but when we look at groups of 3 or more we now can use the new vocabulary of heaviest and lightest. Exploring weight today we looked at groups of 50 and had to decide since they all had the same amount if they would weight the same. There was no tricking this group we made our predictions with our bags and then looked at our results. They were able to explain to me that the pennies are made of metal which weighed more than our cubes of plastic. I challenged them to this thought because our paper clips were made of metal too, but they explained the penny was a solid piece of metal. They had some great thoughts today when comparing weights and materials of items!
On Thursday, we came in and drew our results in our student journals. They then had to write a sentence to explain their heaviest item. We moved onto exploring our next concept of weight - about the same. We looked at our three sets of 50 and had to figure out how we could balance our scale to be an equal weight. The children wanted to add more of the items to try and balance the scale. We added 50 more cubes to our bag to try and balance the pennies and cubes. The pennies still weighed more. They wanted to add more cubes, but we were out of this item. Now they had to think of another way to balance our scale. A student said to remove some pennies. After we took 10 pennies out of the bag we had a scale that showed the concept about the same. We will continue to work with this concept after break. 
2nd Grade: Length - Egg Passenger: Our friends Dru and Teller have purchased a new car, but have asked us for help in purchasing new seat belts. They asked us to remember they are tiny friends of ours, so we began to look at a new unit of measurement - the centimeter. We began by correlating this unit back to the inch and half-inch and discussed the pattern in measurements we would see with these three units. This allowed the children to see the centimeter is a smaller unit than the half-inch. The students were handed a centimeter cube to help them visualize the size of our new unit. Then we looked for a benchmark we could use for the centimeter on our hands - we decided our finger nail would be perfect! Then the students were given a ruler and practiced measuring in their student workbooks with seatbelts. We looked over our answers and I saw huge growth from the first time we practiced with our other units.
On Thursday, we started class by defining the term circumference. Some students remembered using this term when learning to measure around a pumpkin. This was a great start to our class discussion of defining circumference. We then had a new problem we needed to solve - what is the right tool to use to measure the circumference? We began to work with our eggs to examine several tools to measure. We will continue with this experiment next week, until we find the right tool!
3rd Grade: Linear Measurement - In Search of the Yeti: This week in class the children will be constructing our own Yeti. We chose one student to be our benchmark to use and the instructions for building our Yeti were to double our benchmark. As a class we measured our student and each person talked us through how they needed to double their part to the Yeti. Then they spread out around the room and began to use their measurements to draw their part to the yeti. I walked around and worked with each group as they were beginning their sketches. Each group came up with a plan and began to work on their part.
On Thursday, they continued to work through completing the section to the Yeti. When they were finished we slowly began to fit our pieces together. Our Yeti is still in need of hands. As a class, we measured out our benchmark to get the information we needed to construct his hands. After break, they will break into two groups and the goal is to see if our hands match in dimensions from the two groups. This will be another way for me to see if the children have grasped the our new concepts.
4th Grade: The Shape of Things - Triple Play with Shapes: Games...Games...and more Games...This week the children were introduced to a new game to help us work on sets of three. We learned the directions to the game by playing the short version. They quickly mastered the rules and so we added all the cards into the deck. As we worked through the game, I could see they were up for a new challenge...so we added a twist -the more matches they connected in their sets the more points they could earn. Soon this too was becoming easy, so we made one final rule -thinking in sets of three, they must find a match of three with three or more things in common. In this game they were looking at shapes, patterns, numbers and colors. This was a great game to let them visualize connections to help us when we return back to our game from last week. 
IMPORTANT DATES:
November 23rd-25th: Thanksgiving Break – No School
December 1st: Early Dismissal Day
December 19th: Holiday Parties
December 21st: Winter Recess
January 4th: School Resumes
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