~ SPRING FOR FRIDAY ~

Hello Spring!  How can it be that we have already reached Spring Break???  I hope everyone has a wonderful week off.  I can’t wait to see everyone when we return because we have lots of fun activities left, as we finish off the year.

I have saved one of my favorite traits for us to learn from for the end of the year.  I am excited to announce that we will be learning from Mulan!  Earlier in the year, one of my first graders said to me you really want us to be unique...She gathered this information from some of the decorations around the room.  A few other times it has come up in other groups, I always explain to them I want each one of them to be them.  I don’t need 20 of the same students in the room.  

When we return from Spring Break, I will welcome my Kindergarten Friends to HA. Looking forward to meeting everyone on April 3rd!

IMPORTANT EVENTS

March 17th-April 5th: Read-a-Thon

March 24th:  Report Cards Available Online

March 27th - March 31st: Spring Break - No School

April 3rd - 1st Day of HA for Kindergarten

April 4th - Early Dismissal

April 6th - Kindergarten Round-up

April 13th - Spelling Bee/ Book Bowl

May 1st-5th: Teacher Appreciation Week

May12th: Yost Fest

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st GRADE POETRY, PUNCTUATION, & FRIENDLY CONNECTIONS:  We started the week with a fun game...the students drew emoticons on white boards. Then a partner tried to guess the emotion.  Next the question was how does an author show feelings or emotions to a reader?  Punctuation of course!  We read 4 poems to introduce to us the !, ., ?, and the ,. We discussed that each one helps tell the reader how to bring the author’s words to life - with expression!  

On Tuesday, we read Yo! Yes?.  A simple, silly story to teach us the importance of punctuation.  The first time through, I read it with no expression - like a robot - a student replied. We listened to the story a second time, this time with expression. What a difference punctuation makes! We also discussed how the illustrator also showed us some of the emotion if we looked at the characters.


We ended the day looking at a paragraph - with no punctuation. In one long breath I read the paragraph to the students.  They quickly figured out we needed to add punctuation marks so the story would make sense.

After Spring Break, we have a little more to work with on punctuation.

2nd GRADE:  THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX: We used Monday as a day to catch up on our story from the weekend.  They continued to work through their packet and we have everyone caught up to where we are in the story.  It is great seeing them keep making text-to-text connections with our last story.  We have already noticed Kate DiCamillo teaching us the theme of love again in this story.  

On Tuesday, we continued to read and discuss chapters 10 & 11.  They only had to complete one question from these chapters.  As spring break is approaching, I wanted us to come to a good stopping point.  I have asked them to read chapters 12 & 13 by Friday.  As they complete their reading, I have asked them to return their books to the classroom - this way no one will risk losing it over break.

We ended this week by quickly turning back to The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We have cleaned out our folders of the different activities they have completed with our last story and those papers are coming home.  They also each got to pick a word cloud created from the different messages we learned from our book.  I took the responses each student shared and thought this would be a perfect keepsake for them to remember this story.

3rd GRADE:  THE PIED PIPER OF HAMELIN - PROSE OR POETRY?:  On Monday, the children discovered what a Prose is in literature...to their surprise it is a written piece of literature they use almost everyday!  A prose is simply a piece of literature that is not poetry.  We also discussed the history behind our story. We learned there are many different theories to the ending of our story this led them to quickly believe we were reading a legend.  Now onto the tough question, do they prefer the poetry or prose?  One student was quick to choose the prose because in this case it was easier to understand - leading us to discuss when the poem was written and why the literature was difficult to understand.  My other student was in between because they like poetry, but maybe not this particular poem.
 

On Tuesday, we looked at one more way to hear our story - through a video.  However, we discussed what is missing when we take a book and turn it into a movie.  We don’t always get all the little details.  We don’t always get to hear the thoughts of the characters.  Also, the movie tends to leave some parts out - sometimes it might be one of your favorite parts.  We also discussed that what the movie portrays may not be the picture created in our mind when reading the story.  These are the many reasons why - although it is nice to see the movie - it is not the best option for literature.  

When we return from spring break I have pulled some of my favorite poems to share with the children because I would like them to hopefully grow their appreciation for poetry.  They are excited to work with these poems!

4th GRADE:  IT’S A MYSTERY:    This week we finished our short-story.  We started by recapping our list of suspects and clues - this was also a perfect way to catch a few of our friends up with the story. Before the last chapter, we took a poll of who we thought was the suspect.  We had one friend in the class not get tricked by our red herring clues!  Each student filled out a character analysis from the story.

On Tuesday, the students finished up their character analysis.  Then we listened to a new short story from a group of mysteries called Solve-It.  The catch to these stories - the reader is the detective and must solve the ending.  While I read the story they kept notes and came up with their suspect.  I had each student write down who they originally thought was the guilty party.  Then they came together and discussed and shared their ideas.  Convincing classmates to switch to their suspect.  

At the end of class, they were all on the same page with the same guilty person. Eureka - they solved the case! It was great seeing them work together. In the beginning, no one suspected Maria, but after coming together they found the guilty party. There excitement for mysteries continued as they left the room - they are looking forward to working more with mysteries!

MATH

1st GRADE:  INCHING ALONG - MEASURING WITH INCHES:  On Wednesday, we took our unmarked rulers and turned them into marked rulers.  We attached our rulers to a piece of constructions paper and placed tally marks where two inches met.  Then we labeled them from 1 to 12.  The next big question - where should we put 0 - at the beginning or course! 







We then practiced measuring different crayons.  This is where we discussed the importance of counting the spaces and not the tallies.  This was tricking some of my friends and we will add some practice with this when we return from break.

On Thursday, they completed the worksheet Measuring Me.  This was an activity to have them practice measuring with a marked ruler.

2nd GRADE: AREA - THERE’S ALWAYS ROOM FOR ONE MORE:  On Wednesday, we completed an activity to figure out how many sleeping bags would fit into a tent.  They first were given the two measurements to use for the child and adult.  Then they cut out templates to help them moving forward with this activity. Next, we used a worksheet to represent our tent.  t was their job to figure out how many child sleeping bags could fit into the tent.

Then how many adult sleeping bags would fit into the tent.  The child sleeping bag was pretty simple for them to figure out.  However, it was tricky for them to figure out the adult sleeping bag.  We had a tent that had an area of 40 square feet and the adult sleeping bag has an area of 18 square feet.  At first, the thought was two sleeping bags because the total area would be 36 square feet.  However, every way they tried to fit two into the tent they would overlap. So the answer was surprisingly 1!


On Thursday, we looked at our Think Deeply question.  The question to solve followed our activity from the previous day - with the adult sleeping bag.  We looked over the question and identified the important information. Then they worked through and prepared their responses for Dru and Teller.

Luckily we just finished wrapping up this lesson - a perfect stopping point for spring break!  We will move onto our next lesson when we return from Spring Break.

3rd GRADE: AREA - YOU BREAK ME UP!:   On Wednesday, we looked at our Think Deeply question.  We went through the question pulling out all of the important information.  After we pulled out all the details, we discovered we had all the keywords from the lesson on the board. We walked through each term and defined it. Then we walked through one more problem working through the distributive property and writing equations.  For the remainder of class, the students worked on their response.

On Thursday, we took time to walk through the distributive property one more time.  I noticed some students were struggling with their writing. So before we moved forward, I wanted to make sure everyone was ready.  After, a few more exercises to practice I noticed their confidence increase as they worked through some problems!

After Spring Break, we will move onto our next lesson.

4th GRADE:  :  On Wednesday, we wrapped up our lesson on translating a shape on a coordinate plane.  They marked an original shape on their plane recording the points and then translated it.  Next, they recorded a statement explaining the translation.  To end the day, they switched original shapes and translations with a partner.  hey completed one last translation using their partner's information.

On Thursday, they answered a Think Deeply question to end our lesson.  They were all looking forward to answering this one because it involved them plotting points. They quickly worked through their Think Deeply question - allowing us to end the lesson with a little fun.  For added practice, we played Battleship with graphing paper. They really enjoyed this exercise!  They are enjoying working with planes as they were not wanting to move on from this subject. Luckily for them our next lesson will continue working with coordinate planes.