Friday, January 7th, 2022

Welcome Back!  I have mixed things up a bit on the blog.  Instead of looking for your grade under language arts or math, you will now find it organized under grade with language arts and math under separated underneath.  

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

Friday, February 18:  No School - Winter Break

Monday, February 21:  No School - Winter Break

LANGUAGE ARTS:  We dove right into a new lesson.  We started with a sheet the students completed where they had to think of a word or phrase to replace another word with a similar meaning.  However, there was a catch they could not use the letter "E".  They were also encouraged to make sure the new word was in the same tense as the word it replaced.  This led into a mini review on past, present and future tense.  To end the week, the students decoded the secret message.  It was the Secret Pie Cipher Wheel.  We had one student successfully solve it without any hints!  Most of the rest of them solved it after we broke down a few of the hints.  This took us up to the last minute of class, so next week we will discuss the meaning of their secret message.

MATH:  This week the students took what we learned about the one-loop game and applied it to geometry.  They were given a set of shapes with labels to create different scenarios for their classmates to guess what was the same on the inside.  They mastered this quickly.  Then each student created their own loop game on a worksheet where they had to place 3 shapes on the inside and 3 on the outside that would let another student guess their label.  The students took turns sharing their game on the projector for the class to guess the label.  Next week we will add on another loop.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  These guys were rock stars this week!  We had a final project to complete from the Tale of Despereaux and I was worried if they would remember it after break.  They did!  We revisited our character trait project from their favorite character from the movie.  This week they finished selecting the traits and finding the support from the book.  We will finish with the construction of the character next week.

MATH:  This week we had some multiplication review.  I used this as a baseline to see where they were all at with their multiplication facts and this will be used to set up an individualized practice plan for each student.  This way they can work at their own level and when ready move up to division!  Then we went into a review of our 2D and 3D attributes.  This les us into the shape game. I let the students play to become familiar with describing attributes and identifying shapes based on hearing those attributes.  This lets the students master their definitions of their shapes while enjoying the game!  When it is your turn, you have 2D and 3D shapes to select from with the goal of getting the other students to identify it based on your clues.  They can describe the shape by its vertices, sides, edges, faces, or base.  Today we focused on what key words you should listen for to know if you are guessing a 2D or 3D shape.  Also, if it is 3D what they should listen for to decide if it is a prism or pyramid.  For the first time, they did a great job!  We have some work to do on shape names, but we will get there.

LANGUAGE ARTS:  We paused for break in the middle of a lesson, so we continued with our Edmond Fitzgerald project.  This week they continued to create a drawing to show the mood from the song.  We watched a documentary to hear some more of the history behind our story.  We will wrap up their drawings next week.

MATH:  This week we took a pause from our unit and focused on long division.  These guys are always up for the challenge and are determined to master long division.  This week we focused on dividing a 3-digit number by a one digit.  After walking through 4 problems together they were up for the challenge to completing it on their own.  We have a grid they use to help them walk through the steps, but for the last problem they were challenged to complete it without the grid.  Eureka!!  They did it!

LANGUAGE ARTS:  This week we continued with our biography project.  We had to put a few more finishing touches on our timelines this week.  Then they added all their labels onto the project.  

Next week we will begin the final step to our project.

MATH:  This week the students continued with their logic puzzles.  They were excited to continue with their puzzles because they are so close to solving the puzzle.  We reached the part where they all asked for some help because they got stuck.  We will take a few minutes to walk through all the clues and see what each one should have given them before moving onto our next lesson.

Ms. Losinski

Friday, December 17, 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

Holiday Photo Booth

Happy Holidays!

1st Grade:  Word Ladders:

It was a week filled with magical anagrams!  We took a picture walk through our story from last week to remind us about our anagrams.  Then, it was all about creating their anagrams with a word and a clue for each of them.  They words also grew with page one starting with 3 letter words and as they completed the packet they worked their way up to six letter words!  They used their cutout letters to help them manipulate and find the anagram.  This was a packet that allowed them to work at their own pace.  We had two friends that made it to all the way up to our six letter anagrams!

We will move onto a new lesson after break.

2nd Grade:  The Tale of Despereaux - Movie Time:

This week we finished our movie.  We continued to discuss the differences from the book to the movie.  They changed a lot.  This is what helped us lead the discussion on why they might change stuff we talked last week about comedy from an added character and this week they added on to add some more action and excitement. Last week they saw a silly character added and this week they saw a character was actually missing.  Some characters back stories are completely changed and others having a completely different personality.  So much change, but it was left up to them to decide which one they enjoyed better or made a stronger connection.  The action of the movie took a lot of my friends to the movie side.

3rd Grade: A Modern Legend:

This week we studied a modern legend of the Edmond Fitzgerald from November 10, 1975.  We started with a brief discussion on understanding the mood of a poem or a song.  To keep the end in mind, I shared with them they would be creating a drawing of the visual image of the poem I would read to them.  Their image needed to reflect the mood of our poem.  We discussed colors that might be used in a happy, cheerful story verse a sad story.  Next, they listened to the poem.  They quickly discovered that the mood of this poem was extremely sad.  We then listened to a ballad of the poem.  This led us to talk about differences a song might have to reflect a mood.  While listening to the story they were already artists at work with the drawings.  They were challenged to leave no white space left from the paper when they are done.  We went into a great discussion of what makes this true event of the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald a legend.  This quickly led us to the unknown part of the story is how the ship went down and this is where some details may not be all facts within the story as we don't have that information to include in the story.  As the students, completed their drawings we started to watch a documentary on the Edmond Fitzgerald which we will continue after break. 

4th Grade:  Timeline:

This we the students created their visual timeline.  After printing their facts, they assembled them in the correct order.  Next, they added a title and enjoyed having some time to personalize it.  The last part was selecting some pictures throughout the life of their person to add some visual images.  They did a great job finding a wide range of pictures.

We will continue with this project after break.

1st Grade:  Attributes of Shapes:

This week we turned our focus on identifying attributes of shapes.  To prepare for our new game where we will be looking for a common attribute to link a set of shapes we worked through several activities on working with this skill.  We started slow and using us as the objects.  They had to identify why one set of students were standing on the rug and others were on the outside.  An example of some attributes they identified were common colors, having shoe laces, wearing glass, or maybe having a Grinch on their shirt.  The next day we did the same activity, but used a variety of different objects.  We also increased the challenge by having them each take a turn in setting up the attribute for the other students to guess.

We will continue to work with this idea after break.

2nd Grade:  All About 3D-Shapes:

This week we changed gears to discussing the attributes of our 3D-Shapes.  To work with this concept, we looked at an attribute poster of our 2D shapes and then compared it to our 3D shapes.  This allowed them to visually see what was the same and what was new for us to identify.  This led us into a discussion of comparing the difference of a pyramid to a prism  Next, our students had some fun and got to build some 3D-Shapes.  They each took a turn identifying the attributes and identifying the numbers of faces, vertices and edges from their shape.  We had some extra time that they got to play a game of Kahoot identifying the names of  3D shapes.  They quickly showed me that they know the names to a lot of our 3D shapes.

We will continue to work with this after break.

3rd Grade:  Puzzling Puzzles - 300's Chart:

This week the the students continued with their 300's chart challenge.  Students created answer keys for their puzzles as a check to make sure their puzzles were designed correctly.  This week we shifted gears an it was time to complete our classmates puzzles.  The students enjoyed when they took on the role of the teacher and had the chance to grade 

4th Grade:   Logic Puzzle:

Due to activities around the school, we only met on Wednesday.  The students continued to work through the logic puzzle.  They are at the point where they are seeing the process of reworking the steps to search for the additional information that wasn't available the first time through.  We will save these to revisit after break.

Ms. Losinski