October 1st, 2021

Friday, October 8th:  End of 1st Quarter

Thursday, October 14th:  Yost Blood Drive

Wednesday, October 22:  Fall Break - No School

Tuesday, November 2nd:  E-Learning Day

My language arts groups only met on Tuesday because I was out of the building on Monday.

 

1st Grade:  Shield of Connections

THANK YOU to all my families for your help with the prep work to their shield of connections!  We used this week to create our shields.  The students did a great job.  The shields look AMAZING!

Next week they will present their shields to the class.  

2nd Grade:  Introduction to the Reading Analyzer

This week the students started an activity to learn how to complete the reading analyzer.  We used the poem Eldorado by Edgar Allan Poe.  A very difficult piece of literature for the students to understand and this is where the reading analyzer can be helpful.  It is a tool used to help us understand our reading and to take the reading material further in our understanding.

We will continue to work with the reading analyzer and understanding our poem next week.

3rd Grade:  My Reflection

This week the students finished their reflection with our quote.  At the end of class, each student shared their thoughts with the class.  They shared some great thoughts.  We took some time to discuss their ideas.  They decided it's okay to reach for a goal and if you make a mistake or don't reach your goal the first time - it's okay.  We decided that the first success was that you tried for that big goal.  Another thought brought up was the stars and the moon measure the success you reach in life.  A career that made you money verse a career that you love - such deep thoughts!  

Next week we will move onto a new lesson.

4th Grade:  Grammar Time

We needed to wrap up our grammar lesson.  We looked at our sentences and divided them into complete subject and predicate.  This helped make the verb jump out of the sentence.  We also took some time to discuss the difference between the complete and simple subject and predicate.  As continued support to help them work with the linking and helping verbs, we added them to our word wall to use as a reference

Next week we will move onto a new lesson. 

1st Grade: Lingo

This week the students played the game Lingo.  We reviewed the directions of the game and discussed strategies to use when placing your chips.  This game allowed the students to associate the number of sides with the names to our polygons.

We will play lingo again next week because we missed one day with the field trip.

2nd Grade:  Triangle Designs - Designs in Symmetry

This week we looked at designs with symmetry.  First, we had to lay some groundwork.  We looked at a square and found the lines of symmetry in that shape.  Each time we found a line of symmetry we would make a fold with our shape.  This led us to cut our lines creating 8 triangles from our squares.  

From there, we took the triangles and recreated the designs in our shapes.  The first two designs had the triangles labeled and easy to spot within the designs.  The next two designs had less guidance, but these guys quickly found the way to recreate the patterns.  Next, we looked at the four squares and found the lines of symmetry with the different designs in the shape.

We will continue working with symmetry next week.

3rd Grade:  Repeating Patterns to Growing Patterns

These guys were amazing this week!  I was so proud at how they handled their first Think Deeply.  Wednesday, we finished creating our response together.  After defining one explanation, I showed them another way they could have explained a second strategy, but told them they didn't have to write that part. To my surprise, they wanted to write the second explanation too!  We wrapped up our Think Deeply and moved onto the next lesson.  This changed our thinking from a repeating pattern to a growing pattern.  We started looking at growing patterns with a focus on creating a function.  The important part of this lesson is to not fill in the pattern they see in the chart, but to solve it with the function.  This becomes difficult when they see the quick pattern, but we will continue to work with it next week.

*Sorry - missing photos for this group.  We were so busy with the lesson I forgot the photos.  I will try for some extras next week.

4th Grade:  Thinking about Variables and Equations

This week we started our unit.  The Zaccaro packets we worked with the last couple of weeks gave us some great knowledge to build on for this lesson.  This week we played two different number games to have us start to introduce the idea of variables and equations.  To work with our variables, the first game we played was I'm Thinking of a Number.  This game made them work with finding an unknown number.

I would think of a number between a given range and they had to ask mathematical questions that had to be answered with a yes or no to guess me number. On day two, we built onto the game by a adding a rule of working backwards.  This allowed the students to work with equations to guess a magic number.

We will continue with this lesson next week.

Ms. Losinski