October 29, 2021

 

Tuesday, November 2nd:  E-Learning Day

Tuesday, November 2nd:  Parent-Teacher Conferences

11-7pm

Wednesday, November 24:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, November 25:  Thanksgiving Break

Friday, November 26:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, December 9:  E-learning Day

1^st Grade:  Silly Speak:

    This week we continued our journey with Pig Latin.  The students completed several worksheets to practice encoding and decoding.  Then it was time to decide a question…Should all first graders learn Pig Latin?  This led to an interesting debate and led us into the idea of persuading another person to our opinion.  Together, we started to write a persuasion paper on this topic.  The class chose to write it with the thought that all first graders should learn Pig Latin, but a few friends chose to write it the other side of the argument.  To introduce writing a paragraph, we use the hamburger model as a format to create our paragraphs.  This week the students completed a hamburger organizer with their ideas.  Next week we will complete our persuasion papers.

2^nd Grade:  The Tale of Despereaux:

    The students have completed book the first.  This story is organized in 4 mini books.  Books 1 through 3, introduce and tell the story of 3 different character.  Book the 4^th will show where all 3 of those characters come together.  As a class, we continued our focus of adding on to our light verse dark theme from the book.  We began book the second which introduces us to the rats.  This led us to meeting Roscurro and a very interesting rat that goes by the name of Botticelli.  We will continue our tale with Despereaux next week.

3^rd Grade:  Grammar Time:

    This week the students went on a noun hunt.  This hunt puts a strong focus on finding all 4 types of nouns.  The students are familiar with people, places and things, but ideas tend to be a struggle.  We discussed that an idea is something intangible that you cannot touch.  We had to have a quick review on pronouns as some of my friends wanted to highlight some of those on their hunt.  Next, we switched gears to focusing on the purpose of nouns in our sentences this led us to diagramming a sentence.  The students are familiar with our subject noun, but our new focus was on the object of the preposition.  This of course led us into introducing the prepositions.  We will continue with our grammar next week.

4^th Grade:  Change in People:

    We saved our last word from the Greek and Latin words for this week.  It was an autobiography.  This was what introduced us to discuss an autobiography verse a biography.  It led us into what it meant to them for someone to be a change maker.  This week I asked the students to come up with 3 possible ideas of who they would like to research as a change maker.  I emphasized to them to make sure it is someone that not only fits our idea of a change maker, but someone they want to learn more about as we they will use this person for a major research project.  We used the remaining time to practice diagraming some of our sentences.  This is a great practice we use throughout the year as a review to parts of speech and identifying parts of a sentence.  This week they saw several sentences focusing on a linking verb.  They got to see with several examples of how it links the subject noun to the predicate.  We will continue with our change making project next week. 

1^st Grade Math:  Groupo:

    It’s GAME TIME again!  This week the students learned the rules to Groupo.  This game has a dealer and the students have a goal of creating the most pairs of shapes.  The shapes are like the new shapes we created last week, where they are made with several shapes on the inside to make one new shape.  To qualify as a pair, the students must meet 4 of the 5 different requirements listed below:

The students quickly saw that items one through three on the list would be correct with the same sides, vertices and shape name, if they counted either the sides or vertices to make the pair.  The tricky part came to the last two – made with the same number of shapes or all shapes on the inside were the same.  They quickly saw it all came down to what is inside the shape to make the pair.  We will continue with our lesson next week.

2^nd Grade:  More with Triangles & Transformations

    This week we continued exploring geometry with triangles.  I was happy that they remembered our magic number with a triangle is 180 degrees.  We continued to look for the missing angle and practicing adding and subtracting with our numbers.  Then, it was onto transformations!  We completed a set of worksheets to teach the three transformations:  flip, slide and turn.  We discussed the importance of a turn moving from a fixed point and a flip with reflect over a line of reflection.  They rocked this part out!  To end the week, the students completed Transformation Trip where they transformed a triangle all around a paper by identifying the different transformations.  We will continue with this lesson next week.

3^rd Grade:  Chapter Check-Up

    This week it was time for the students to complete their first chapter check-up for the year.  At the end of each chapter, we have a check-up to see if the students have mastered the lessons or if we need to have a quick review before moving onto the next chapter.  The chapters each build upon each other with our big topic of algebra, so it is important that they master these lessons before moving on to the next.  We will continue exploring algebra next week.

 

4^th Grade: Variable Puzzles

    This week the students finished creating their magic tricks.  Then, it was their turn to be the magician as they tested out their tricks with other  classmates.  They took them home this week, so they might have shared them with you and maybe they even told you the secret.  Next, we moved onto our new lesson on variable puzzles.  This involved them solving for two different variables within a chart where the letter had the same value each time while being represented in different equations.  They were solving these quickly!  However, I slowed them down a bit to focus on our equations.  I wanted them to be able to use our math language and create an equation each time they were solving the puzzle.  They did a great job with this challenge.  We will continue with this lesson next week.

Ms. Losinski