Friday, December 10, 2021

 

Monday, December 20:  Holiday Break

Tuesday, January 4:   Return from Holiday Break

Monday, January 17:  No School - Martin Luther King Jr Day

Friday, February 18:  No School - Winter Break

Monday, February 21:  No School - Winter Break

1st Grade:  Magical Anagrams:

This week the students were introduced to anagrams.  To introduce the idea, we started with the letters O, S, T, & P.  on displayed on the board.  As a class, we brainstormed the six different words we can create from these 4 words.  This activity demonstrated to the students the definition of an anagram.  An anagram is a word or phrase formed for the rearrangement of letters in another work.  Then we looked at several examples to practice creating anagrams.  To end the week, we read The Great Show-and-Tell Disaster by Mike Reiss.  The students enjoyed this story as it was full of lots of humor and entertainment with all the anagrams.

We will continue to work with anagrams next week.

2nd Grade:  The Tale of Despereaux:

We started a project to look at character traits and text evidence.  As a class, we took Gregory and we came up with some character traits for him.  Then, we went to the book to look for text evidence to support our thoughts.  We included a page number to show where we found our evidence.  Then, we took our other characters and brainstormed a list of character traits for students to guide them as they complete it on their own.  To end the week, we started to watch the The Tale of Despereaux.  While watching the movie, the students completed a VENN diagram to compare the book to the movie.  Quickly in the first 30 minutes they have already filled their sheets and have seen LOTS of differences between the two.  

We will continue with the movie next week.

3rd Grade:  Grammar Time:

It was all about pronouns!  This week we looked at an excerpt from a tall tale and identified all the nouns, action verbs and pronouns.  Then, the students took the pronouns and had to draw and arrow back to the noun it replaced.  The next day we continued to look at pronouns.  I challenged them further and we talked about subject/object pronouns and possessive pronouns.  We slowly walked through a few more examples identifying different parts of speech in a sentence and then discussing what we saw with the pronoun.

4th Grade:  Change Maker:

We had a great week full of research!  This week we started to gather the information for our timeline.  Together, we walked through the life of Marie Curie as we gathered the important parts of her life.  While we were completing this step, we wrote down several obstacles that stood out that we will add into our summary packet and a few details to add to the time period question.   

We will continue to work with this project next week.

1st Grade:  Angles All Around:

The students were introduced to angles as a new defining attribute to our shapes.  We discussed the three different angles: obtuse, acute and a right angle.  Then, we made some homemade protractors for the students to use to measure our angles.  This led us to an angle hunt around the school.  We went on a search for our three angles.  They quickly discovered that right angles are all around us, so it became a challenge for us to look for the acute and obtuse angle.

2nd Grade:  Attributes:

This week our focus was describing our 2-dimenstional shapes.  The discussion was driven by attributes we can use to define the different shapes.  Our main features to describe our shapes were sides, vertices, angles, parallel lines, and they are all flat.  We constructed 6 shapes and then began to identify the attributes to describe our set of shapes.

We will add onto this lesson next week.

3rd Grade:  It's Puzzle Time:

This week the students were given a project-based think deeply.  They had to create their own 100's chart puzzles like what they solved last week with the 700's chart.  They created their own 300's chart to use as a reference as they took cut-outs out of the chart.  Then, they created their own puzzles that their classmates will solve next week.  This of course was where they were up for some trickery, as they wanted to stump their classmates with their puzzles.  To wrap up the project, they had to also create an answer key to their puzzles.  

We will continue with this project next week.

4th Grade:  Logic Puzzles:

This week the students were introduced to their first logic puzzle of the year.  We took a pause from our math unit to let them work on solving the logic puzzle.  Some of my friends may have seen this puzzle before, but we walked through it together.  We like to share this with the 4th graders with the challenge of completing it on their own.  It is all about deciphering a set of 7 clues.  The trick is finding the hidden clues and you must go back and rework the clues several times as more is found in the clues after you start to solve parts of the puzzle.  It takes lots of patience to solve this puzzle.  

We will continue to solve this puzzle next week.

Ms. Losinski

Friday, December 3rd, 2021

Thursday, December 9:  Professional Development Day 

No School

Monday, December 20:  Holiday Break

Monday, January 3:   Return from Holiday Break

1st Grade:  Word Ladders

We had a busy week mastering word ladders.  This week the students completed 1 and 2 step word ladders where we started with one word and ended with a completely different word.  It was a fun activity for them to see how changing just one letter can change the whole meaning and or pronunciation of a word.  

We will begin a new lesson next week.

2nd Grade:  Tale of Despereaux

It was all about a little friendly competition this week!  The students got to have some fun since we completed our book study.  The students challenged their classmates in a few rounds of blooket and kahoot as a review of finishing the story.  This time the questions covered the entire story which was a challenge to remember some of our smaller details from early on in the book.

We will continue with another wrap up activity next week. 

3rd Grade:   Fairy Tale

This week we looked further at the elements of a fairy tale.  As a class, we defined and added the elements to our charts.  Then, we changed gears and added a fairy tale into the third circle of our VENN diagram.  They did a great job of finding similarities of our myth/legend to a fairy tale and tall tale to fairy tale.  This has presented as a challenge in past years, but they were full of ideas!  

We will start a new lesson next week.

4th Grade:  Biography Summary

Research was the name of the game for the week!  They continued to complete their biography summary packet.  We took a pause from the packet to complete a works cited paper as they had some books, they were ready to return to the library.  We had a brief discussion on MLA and APA format, but I explained to them that they are only listing the important information that would normally be taken to that next step.  They will not be required to use MLA or APA for their assignment. I shared with them examples of what it would look like in that way so they had a visualization to see the difference and would be familiar with this when it is introduced to them at a later time.

We will continue with our project next week.

1st Grade:  Chapter Check-Up

It was time for their first chapter check-up!  We had a discussion before the students completed it as this was their first time seeing this in our room.  It is not taken as a grade, but a way for me to see if they have mastered the first part of the material we have covered or if we need a little more review before moving onto the next chapter.

2nd Grade:  Chapter Check-Up

It's chapter check-up time!  Most of my students were familiar with the chapter check-up from the previous year, but I reminded them that it was not for a grade.  This is just a quick check-in with them at this point to see if they have mastered the material from chapter one and are ready to move on or if they needed a little more review.  They did a great job on the check-up.  We took a moment to review a few questions that I saw they needed a little reminder on from previous lessons.  Then, we used the remainder of time to have some division fun!

We will start a new lesson next week. 

3rd Grade:  Puzzling Puzzles

This week we worked on visualizing the 100's chart to fill in missing pieces.  We first reviewed the definition of an array.  Then, we talked about identifying the row and column of a number by just seeing a number.  They came up with two rules to help us identify the column and row with an exception for the rows for our multiples of 10.  We looked at two problems that were a jigsaw puzzle of a cutout from the 100's chart.  This was the perfect time to review our plus and minus 10 rule of moving up and down a row and the plus and minus 1 rule from moving left and right in our columns.  Mastering these rules allowed them to successfully complete these two puzzles easily.  Now it was challenge time!  Using our same strategies, they needed to fill-in some more puzzle pieces from the 700's chart.  We had a copy of the 700's chart if they needed to refer to it, but I asked them to first try it on their own without the chart.  They were of course up for the challenge and they all succeeded without the chart!  They were rock stars!

We will continue with this lesson next week.

4th Grade:  Chapter Check-Up

It was check-up time for this group!  I reminded the students that this is not used as a grade, but a way for me to see if they have mastered the chapter or if they needed to review a concept before we move on from this part of the unit.  We took some time to review the two concepts they have learned for solving our equations.  At this point, the students seemed comfortable with one of the two strategies they have learned.  However, they needed a reminder of the two different strategies that we have been using.  This was a big issue with my friends who like to work backwards.  They knew they were using a strategy and were able to get the correct answer.  However, they either forgot the name of it or why it works.  After a quick review of the why, we were back on track.   We worked on some more problem solving with our Zaccaro packet with our remaining time.

Next week we will start a new lesson. 

Ms. Losinski