Friday, November 19th, 2021

Wednesday, November 24:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, November 25:  Thanksgiving Break

Friday, November 26:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, December 9:  E-learning Day

Monday, December 20:  Holiday Break

Monday, January 3:   Return from Holiday Break

1st Grade:  The Over/Under Substitution Cipher

We had a jam-packed week!  We started off with a worksheet to get our brains thinking about our next puzzles we will be completing.  The students were given a word and a clue to a new word that had to come up with by changing only one letter in the first word.  They rocked with this assignment.  Then, it was onto our new secret message – The Over/Under Cipher.  After a quick hint to use the title as the clue, I quickly heard a student say to switch out the letters with the letter on top of it or below it.  Eureka!  They were on their way to solving their new secret message:  Hip, hip hooray for the alphabet!  This led us into our book The Disappearing Alphabet by Richard Wilbur.  We used this book to model how to complete our reading analyzer.  The reading analyzer is a tool used to help us understand our reading and look for the deeper meaning to a story.  We walked through the steps of how to complete it.  By the time we got to the main idea of the story, I quickly heard the students talk about how important the alphabet is and each letter in it.  They got it!

We will continue with this lesson after thanksgiving break.

2nd Grade:  The Tale of Despereaux

We are so close to the end of our first novel study!  We started book the 4^th and have seen how all our characters were destined to meet each other.  All 3 stories are playing out together as we read the last book.   We held a class discussion on what it meant to hold a grudge and how holding a grudge can hurt ourselves.

We will wrap up the book in the next week and complete some different wrap-up activities.

3rd Grade:  A Tall Tale

We continued are comparison of a myth/legend to a tall tale.  This week they completed a VENN diagram to help us visualize the comparison.  I showed them a third circle we will add onto our VENN diagram in a week and to keep that in mind as we read Billy Beg and his Bull.  As I read this folklore, they were given the task of marking down any exaggeration they heard in the story.  We paused halfway through and took a vote as to what the genre might be and using some good clues, they eliminated myth because it was not written to explain the unexplainable.  They also considered eliminating a tall tale as it did not have enough extreme exaggeration.  This led them to all agree that it must be a legend.  As we got to the ending of our story, I heard a student mention how similar the ending was to Cinderella.  We only had a few minutes left at this point, but this led them to agreeing the genre was a fairy tale.  We backtracked for a moment about one big hint they all missed in the beginning of the story…the famous words of Once Upon a Time.  We briefly discussed that this is a characteristic that they will see in our fairy tales.

We will continue with this lesson after thanksgiving break.

 

4th Grade:  A Change Maker

We are officially cruising on our change maker project!  We looked at an outline of the overall project and what will be expected of them with this project.  They moved onto their next step of completing their biography summary.  This step is very important that they complete with lots of details as it serves as a big part of their notes.  We came to an agreement of a spot that all students thought they could complete by the end of next week.    I also gave them a paper and encouraged them to track their 10 or more important facts with dates as they are reading.  This will help guide them to completing another part of their project as they are researching verse back-tracking later.  One fun discovery the students saw was both of their change makers were living in the same time period!  It will be interesting to see how the time period affected each of their projects in different ways.

We will continue with our project next week.

1st Grade:  What Happened?

It is game time again!  This game adds onto our last game of Groupo.  The students would draw a Groupo card and recreate the design.  Then they would leave the table while the other person would spin for one of three options:  take one away, move a shape or do nothing.  Then, the other player would return and must guess What Happened to their shape.  To end their turn, the student would have to say my shape was a________ and is a ____________ to discuss the shapes they see while playing the game.

 

Some Blooket Fun with Battle Royal!

2nd Grade:  Think Deeply

It was time for another Think Deeply!  These guys were amazing as they had LOTS to write about in their response.  Together, we defined a basic shape in a tessellation. Then they had to identity the shapes that created it and discuss how they were connected.  To end their response, they had to discuss the transformations used to create the tessellation.  We used this time to review the definition of a basic unit and all our transformations.  We have also introduced the terms reflection, rotation and translation.  They do not need to master these terms at this point, but I was proud to see them remember two of them.  The translation as a slide seems to be our tricky one.  This one my friends always want to mix up with the word transformation.  To end the week, we started to review and learn some of our tricks to mastering our multiplication.   As a review for my students that have mastered most of their facts, this was a review as they became the teacher of the tricks for the day.

3rd Grade:  Think Deeply

It is time for another Think Deeply!  The students were asked to compare the multiples of 2 and 3 on the 100’s chart.  They had to color in their multiples and describe those patterns.  Then, we switched our focus to the overlaps of our multiples.  The students quickly saw that these were actually are multiples of our 6’s.  They were challenged with the task to explain what made those numbers the overlaps of our 2’s and 3’s.

We will start a new lesson after thanksgiving break.

 

4th Grade:  Cover-Up

*I apologize for the smaller font, but I am having technical issues with the program when I try to enlarge it.

This week it was all about the cover-up method in algebra.  This was a challenge for the students to wrap their brain around it because of us learning to solve equations already by working backwards and using inverse operations.  I asked them to give it a try for those that were forgetting a few steps with our other method might find this way works better for them.  We also talked about the chance that this is the method students are ultimately using when solving equations quickly in their mind and they did not even know it.  Some students immediately stated this way is not for them.

 Look below for a sample of the cover-up method.  This is a great strategy for those that were struggling with the inverse operation to utilize.

4N + 6 = 22

1 – COVER-UP the 4N:      4N + 6 = 22

2 – Now ask yourself what number plus 6 equals 22.

16 + 6 = 22 which means 16 = 4N

3 - NEXT, ask yourself 4 times what number equals 16?  4 x 4 = 16

Your answer is 4 = N

To end the week, the students solved some more equations.  This time they could use either method to solve it.

Ms. Losinski

Friday, November 12, 2021

Wednesday, November 24:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, November 25:  Thanksgiving Break

Friday, November 26:  Thanksgiving Break

Thursday, December 9:  E-learning Day

1st Grade:  All About Pages

The students were introduced to Pages.  This is an app we will use throughout the year for a few different final projects.  It is a great tool for the students to learn as they can use it as a resource for many different projects.  They learned about adding texts, drawings and pictures.  However, the exciting feature we used was the ability to record their paper.  This is a great feature to allow them to read and record their final draft instead of typing it.  The students have their final projects completed on their iPads.  Ask them to share them with you if they have not already.

2nd Grade:  The Tale of Despereaux

We have completed book the third and hearing Mig's story this week.  We are ready to press play on all three stories and see how all of our characters are destined to meet each other.  The students just saw how the prisoner Roscuro tortured has a major connection to Mig.  They are excited to read on and see if those two characters will meet each other too.  This week the students took a moment to add on pieces to our light vs dark comparison of our story.  It was interesting seeing them all add the characters to certain sides.   To end the week, the students had some review fun with the book as we played a game of KaHoot to help us remember the important details from book the first.  We will continue with our book study next week.

3rd Grade:  A Tall Tale

We began our class this week hearing a Tall Tale of Johnny Appleseed.  This was an interesting version as it kept to a an original version of the story leaning more towards our characteristics of a legend.  At the end of the book, it took a twist to tell us how over time his story has changed. It shared with us different parts that have been changed as the story has been told over and over.  They decided that a big difference with a tall tale to a legend that might have some exaggeration in it as well was EXTREME exaggeration was a theme they were seeing.  To end the week, we took some time to look at our definition of a tall tale and add it onto our folklore organizer.

We played a quick round of telephone to see how a phrase can change as it is passed down a line.

4th Grade:  A Change Maker

This week we had to back track on our change maker project.  We want to make sure the students are researching a new person they haven't done a project on before and while researching their person last week, this came up as a student has already completed a project on our last person.  We took some time out on Monday to come up with new change makers.  After they found a new change maker, they used the rest of the week to start their research on their person.

1st Grade:  Think Deeply

On Monday, we finished our Think Deeply from last week.  This week we completed our writing portion of the assignment.  The students had to write 4-ways their pair of shapes were alike and one way the pair was different.  After our think deeply, we used the remainder of the week playing a few review games of our shapes.

2nd Grade:  Tessellations & Review

This week the students completed their tessellations.  They did a great job using their transformations to create their masterpieces!  Each student took a turn sharing their design.  The students took turns looking for the basic unit of the tessellation.  When we found the basic unit, we identified the new shape that was created and identified the original shapes they used to create the basic unit.  Then, the students identified the transformations the students used to create their tessellation.  To end the week, the students tested out Blooket for our review days, but these guys were tough critics and missed KaHoot.  We ended class with a quick round of KaHoot.

Review time with Blooket & KaHoot is always a favorite!

3rd Grade:  100's Charts:

We continued our search for patterns within our 100's charts.  We completed our charts of finding our multiples for the numbers 2-10.  They are doing a great job of using our math terminology to describe the pattern in the chart.  Next, we completed a worksheet to let us look at all the patterns we found with our charts and look for similarities within all of them.  We will wrap up this unit next week.

4th Grade:  Think Deeply & Zaccaro

On Wednesday, when we had the whole group, we were able to complete our Think Deeply.  The students were asked to select a variable puzzle and write about how they solved it.  We were a step ahead of the game as we identified our equations last week as an extra challenge.  This made this Think Deeply a piece of cake for the students!  On Thursday, we had the rest of our mismatched match-up from last week.  My students that were gone last week from the field trip completed their Zaccaro packets.  We had to have a reminder that these are meant to make us have some trial and error while we solve these packets.  They are meant to progress and get more difficult as we work through them and not always intended for an easy answer to jump out at them.  We will start a new lesson week.

Ms. Losinski