~ THRILLING THURSDAY ~

Hello Everyone! It has been a crazy week with schedules.  This week we began to test our Kindergarten friends on CogAT and this will affect some of my groups.  The CogAT screening will continue on through part of March, as second grade will be next.  I am trying to set the schedule so it doesn’t interrupt our groups too much.  This week we have moved onto the movie Brave.  When hearing our movie some friends immediately thought of strength.  We began to talk a little bit on what we can learn from this movie with our first quote - being proud of your own identity and having the strength to be you.  

Here is our finished kindness project..  Some students showed interest in wanting to keep adding onto our wall...So while it is on display in the hallway, I will have hearts that they can fill out as they come up with more ways to spread kindness.  They did a great job in helping me create it.

We forgot a picture of our winning class for the month of January so stay tuned next week to see our class of the month...

IMPORTANT DATES:
February 3rd: NFL Day - Wear Team Gear
February 14th: Valentine Parties
February 17th: Mid-Winter Break - No School
February 20th: President's Day - No School

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade:  Leaving Letters Out - Lipograms:  On Monday, we started the day by reading our story E-Mergency.  While reading the story we looked at the two different stories being told - the narrator is telling the story and so are the letters.  This was an important twist that the children pointed out before the ending.  Our injured letter “E” wasn’t healing because the narrator kept using him in his story!  

The letters realized it and convinced him to STOP using “E” so “E” could heal - which thankfully he did just in time for THE END!

The students were excited to help me read the story.  They found it silly to try and pronounce the new words with “O” instead of “E”.  For example bed became bod and rest was rost.

On Tuesday, the students and I composed 3 sentences from our story.  A beginning, middle and ending sentence.  Each student took a turn in helping me make one of these sentences.  Then it was onto the challenge we had to turn our sentences into lipograms - picking one of the most used letters in the alphabet E,T, O, A, or I.  We worked on the first one together and then they chose from our list of letters and completed the next two alone.  They were allowed to have a partner help them think of words for their lipograms - I saw some great teamwork!

2nd Grade:  Connect with Others through a Socratic Seminar:  We had an exciting week as the students were excited to finish our novel study.  However, before we completed our story we needed to re-visit our predictions.  We looked back at four of our predictions and revised them based on what we know now.  I also asked them to write a final prediction on what might happen in our last few chapters.

We started class on Tuesday sharing our predictions of what might happen in the end of the story.  Then as a class we finished our story together.  This took the remainder of our class time for Tuesday.  Some students were happy to find that their predictions were correct or on the right track.  However, they were surprised to find out just how much time has passed in our story.  We will finish discussing our book next week when the children learn about a Socratic Seminar.

3rd Grade: Fairy Tales:  We did not meet on Monday due to a field trip.  On Tuesday, we took some time out of class to review the elements of a Fairy Tale.  We did this by being introduced to the game of KaHoot.  This was the first time they have played this game in class.  It is a game where a question is projected with our doc camera for all to see.  

Then with the help of their Chromebooks as a buzzer each child selects the answer - the catch- the faster you answer the more points you can win!  They had so much fun with this activity, that they asked to play two rounds.  When finished they were allowed to use the remaining time to put some of the finishing touches on their drawings.

4th Grade:  Change Makers:  Most students were able to put their finishing touches on their timelines. I have two friends still adding finishing touches - so I will share the final timelines next week. Then they were using the remainder of time to work on their monologue.  I showed them one more sample to help them understand the length of the monologue. I also stressed the importance of defining the change their person provided as they are writing their monologue.

Due to CogAT testing, we did not meet on Tuesday - putting their Prezi demonstration on hold until Monday.  I did tell their teachers that as long as they had access to their Chromebooks they could work on their monologues during Flex time. This will allow an extension for the students to complete their monologue - they are due at the beginning of class on Monday, February 6th.  If they are finished with their monologue they can enjoy a week of no homework!

Due Next Week:

February 6th:  A Completed Monologue

MATH

1st Grade:  The Undercover Booths:  We only met on Thursday because of early dismissal.  We are wrapping up our lesson on area. As a challenge today, I allowed them to complete  the Triangle Target Designs center.  This was a way for us to examine area with a new unit of measurement.  Each student was asked to create 2 different target designs using 4 triangles in a design.
 A catch to the design was they must line up their triangles with a congruent line from the adjacent triangle.  This was a struggle for some, but then they got the hang of it while learning about the term congruent.  After they all completed their two designs - it was time for the challenge...which shape had the largest area?  Each student made their prediction to this question.  Then we started to count are triangular units of their guesses.  By the second one,  most friends figured out it was a trick question!  They were all the same area - 4 triangular units - even though some shapes were longer.  I think they really enjoyed the challenge center.

2nd Grade:  Length - Car Seats for Egg Passengers:  It was time for our Think Deeply question to help our friends Dru and Teller.  We needed to think about our car seats and their designs.  We took a minute to re-examine our 4 designs and brainstorm a list of ideas that would make these a better representation of our car seats.  Our list included labels ( of materials and measurements), color, picture and step by step instructions.  This was a great list and I love the added detail to add instructions so another person could replicate them.  This was not a requirement to the assignment- so I loved this thought process.

 Now we discussed the different elements each car seat used.  Different groups shared their ideas and thought process to their designs.  Then we came to the straw.  Many groups tossed it aside and didn’t use it - so I asked them for ways they may have been able to incorporate it into their designs.  One group tried to use it as a cushion to absorb the impact of the crash - we took this idea further.  I showed them a way they could have used it with the carton to make the egg snug into the compartment.  

Now it was onto them answering the questions.  First, they needed to answer ways they would change their design to make it better.  It was great to see some students add in elements from our discussion into their writing.  Others focused on their design - if they missed points on this from the evaluation.  Next, they had to design a car seat for Dru and Teller using only 40 cm of supplies and identify the amount of supplies to use.  They needed to include a drawing for our friends so they can replicate their new designs.

On Thursday, they were allowed some more time to finish their response to Dru and Teller.  We reviewed our list our diagrams should include because I noticed some friends were rushing this step yesterday.  After a quick reminder, they took their time with this step - so much time that we didn’t get to complete a round 4 to our seat belt tests.  We utilized our last few minutes sharing our new designs with our classmates. It was great hearing them discuss the strength of materials while explaining their thoughts.

Next week we will take our chapter check-up.  I have big plans for Thursday if the group does well on their check-up!

3rd Grade:  Area - This About Covers It!:  We are starting with a new chapter this week!  Our new math concept will focus on area.  We are going to learn about finding the area of irregular shapes.  To start the lesson we worked on defining area.  They were quick to identify it as an inside measurement of stuff.  Stuff?  We needed to figure out, with the use of our math terms - what this stuff they were referring to was...Thankfully we identified it as the inside measurement to a 2-D shape of it’s inside dimensions.  We walked through a practice sheet on finding area of a closed rectangular shape.  Now for the twist...how do you find the area of an irregular shape?  Our story of the exploration team continues on...with a review of the team learning about area of irregular shapes.  To begin each exploring this idea each child drew a picture of a fried egg.  Some wanted to draw a square egg - so we quickly fixed this to get our irregular shape.  First, they made a prediction of their shapes area.  Next, I asked them to figure out the exact area.

Everyone did so easily, however they left off many squares in the process.  We needed to learn how to count partial squares. We started to put them together like a puzzle...2 halves = 1 whole or ¼ plus a ¾ =1 whole.  Now they recounted their area - with great success this time.  Two friends had fried eggs about the same in size.  Earlier they were off in area from one another by about 200 square units.  This time they were only separated by about 10 square units.  They are on the right track!  To end our introduction to area we needed to define and have a better understanding of the idea of measuring with a square unit.  We ended class discussing this idea and working on a sheet to help them better understand it.

4th Grade:  Spatial Visualization - Do You See What I See?:  We started out with a quick review of our new topic Transformation.  The children remembered our key terms and our words to remember them:  transformation = movement, translation = slide, and reflection = mirrored/flipped.  I was pleased because they also remembered the importance of our positional terms: left, right, up and down.

 We had to have a quick reminder of the term line of reflection and identifying it as vertical or horizontal.  This was perfect because it introduced us to using our positional terms with our line of reflection.  We looked at our two reflections and wrote descriptions to how they were reflected.  Then it was onto independent practice.  I allowed the students to use mirrors to help them reflect the image.

  However, I challenged them to try the last one without the mirror.  They did a great job with describing their reflections.  We had just enough time to introduce our last transformation - rotation.  We came up with a class list of things that we believe rotate:  wheels, gears, ferris wheel, wind mill, carousel and the eye roll.  We will revisit this list at the end of rotation to see if they all fit our definition.  

On Thursday, we started class with the positional terms we use for rotation - clockwise and counterclockwise.  We also identified the ways to move our rotation in degrees.  To better understand this and the importance of identifying our positional terms each student stood up and followed a list of instructions.  There was not tricking them today - when a direction didn’t specify the direction of the term - they would ask for clarification.   For independent practice the completed two sheets in their student journal on rotation.  Everyone did a great job and we finished early...so we played Simon Says with Transformations!  Each student took a turn as Simon and they either rotated their friends or translated them!