~FRIGID FRIDAY~

Hello!  The kids are up for our new challenge for the month of December.  We started the week by talking about our new theme for the month with Monsters University - with our class focus being on Teamwork, Friendship, and Following Class Procedures.  This week's quote talked about if we work together as a TEAM we can reach any goal.  However, we can quickly get off track if our team begins to fall apart.  Never worry because we learned earlier this year with a good leader on your team you can quickly get back on track.  

For the next two weeks, until we announce the winning class I will display on here the leaderboard for the Character of the Month.  Look below to see if your class is in the lead…

Our Leaders:

3rd Grade Math - 11

4th Grade Language Arts - 8

2nd Grade Math - 8

Check back next week to see who finishes the challenge as the Class of the Month.

Next week we will also have our pictures announcing our Character of the Month from Just Keep Swimming.

LANGUAGE ARTS

1st Grade:  Connecting Letters and Language  :  On Monday, I had a lot of friends absent so with the friends I had we finished our word ladders we were working on last week.  We waited to review them until Tuesday, when all of our friends would hopefully be back.

On Tuesday, the children were given 5 minutes to finish up their word ladders.  Then they were given a worksheet to complete in class.  They were given four letters and they needed to unscramble them to form a word.  There were many different combinations they could have made with with these four letters - it was great to see each person have a different solution!   To end class today, we looked at our new secret message.  Each student was given a mirror to try to decode the message.  They successfully used the mirror to decode their message.

Afterwards, we looked at the message and I showed them two other ways they could have solved it if they didn’t have a mirror.  We will begin our new lesson next week.

2nd Grade:  Text to Text Connections - The Velveteen Rabbit:  On Monday, we discussed chapter 13.  We focused on two important details from this chapter, first Edward was given a proper outfit to fit in as an outlaw.  Second, how he would stare at the stars every night and listed off the people he has grown to love.  Always beginning and ending with Abilene.  We also discussed the important reference this chapter was making back to the story Pellegrina told Edward in chapter 4.  After talking about it as a class, they were given a worksheet to complete.  On this worksheet, they had to describe what happened to Edward on the 180th day in the garbage dump.  

On Tuesday, we were setting our story aside for a moment to read a selection from the Velveteen Rabbit.  We gathered in the circle and the children listened as I read them the story.  We took the last few minutes of class to write in our journals the description they have of the rabbit from this story, so they can use that as a reference next week - just in case any one forgets! We will finish this story next week and the children will work towards making a text to text connection.

3rd Grade:  Fairy Tales:  We are onto our last Folktale- a Fairy Tale.  As a class, we came up with a list of Fairy Tales the children knew.  Then it was time to define a fairy tale from what we knew from our list.  We came up with a few things to start our definition - starting with it being a folktale, meaning fiction and passed on over time.  Then we talked about the very first sentence in a fairy tale - leading us to our last part of our definition for now - Once upon a time…  After that we listened to a fairy tale together.

On Tuesday, we finished reading our story.  Then we went through the events in the story.  When we completed talking about it - we went through a checklist to a fairy tale.  As I read through the elements a fairy tale would have, we quickly checked through all of the events we had on the board.  We will continue exploring more about fairy tales next week.

4th Grade:  Change Makers:  On Monday, most of the students turned in their references.  I am still waiting on one reference from two students.  Then they had the remainder of class time this week to work on their biography summaries.  

While they worked on their projects I called each student to me one at a time to conference with them on what they have completed so far with their summary.  Most of them our off to a good start.  I did stress to them a few details in each area and they should have more than one sentence for each question.  I also expressed the need for details to what they are writing.  I explained to them that although they are researching this information and it makes sense to them, they need to write it as if the audience knows nothing about their person - which might be the case.  Details...Details...Details…  After this talk, I saw most of them go back and add on to their summaries.  

Due Next Week:

On December 13th:

- Biography Summary is due by the end of class

-Works Cited should be filled in with the primary and secondary sources

-they will continue to add to the works cited page as they gather their images

MATH

1st Grade:  It’s Heavy - A Bag of Pennies:  This week we started by looking at our items we brought from home and weighing it against our 50 pennies.  Then we took our bags from the class and tried to put them in order from lightest to heaviest.  This was a perfect introduction into our lesson on transitivity.  Our goal this week was to learn how to figure out lightest to heaviest with items of three.  The problem - we can only weigh two items at once - so how do we figure it out…

We continued working with transitivity on Thursday with sets of three and recording our results in our journals.  We completed the sample together in class and I had sample bags prepared to help them visualize it.  We did one more sample together as a class and then they were working on the next two with a partner.  They are doing a great job working with this new concept.

2nd Grade: Length - Egg Passenger:   On Wednesday, we finished discussing the right tool for the job.  Then we began to write our class summary for the lesson.  We looked at our Think Deeply question and figured out that Dru and Teller needed to know the best tool to measure the circumference of an object.  We then looked back at our class results and evaluated each tool we used. We ruled out using the ruler because it can not bend and although the pipe cleaner can bend it has no markings to know a measurement.

 As a class, we came to the conclusion that if we could combine the ruler and pipe cleaner than they would make a good tool.  However, if only having one tool - the tape measure is the right tool for our job.  It is the perfect tool to use to measure circumference because it has the markings and can bend to measure around an object.  

A little blurry from all the dancing  :)

On Thursday, it was time for the children to write their response while using our class summary to support their answer.  We quickly reviewed our message we wrote from the day before, then the children were off and writing to Dru and Teller.  After the class finished we went through a few more think deeply questions out loud to take our lesson further.  To reward them for an awesome job with their writing, we had a few minutes left at the end for some GoNoodle - to get the wiggles out!  

3rd Grade:  Linear Measurement - In Search for the Yeti:   We started class this week by examining our two hands on our Yeti.  One group had the right dimension and mastered our skill.  Our other group had the right dimensions, but added claws onto their hand - making it too long.  We discussed how they could have added claws, but explained they needed to include them in their final dimension of their product.  This was a perfect learning experience for all the students.  

Then we came together as a class and began to summarize our lesson with our message board.  We started by identifying the terms from our lesson and defining them.  Then we talked about the approach the class took to come up with our benchmark for our Yeti. To end our message, we looked back at the question one last time and identified different parts to the question the students should include in their answer.

On Thursday, we started by having a quick explanation of the details we wrote as our message.  Then the students had the remainder of time to write.  Although they weren’t excited at first about writing - this groups did an amazing job today with this task.  They had so much to write that I even had some students need extra paper to add onto their writing.  It is exciting to see such growth with this area of our lesson so quickly.

4th Grade:  3-D Shapes Inside Out:  On Wednesday, the students were given a little more time to add onto their Think Deeply assignement from last week.  Most students completed the first two questions, but needed to answer why they chose their cards to make a match.  When everyone was finished we had just enough time to play set - the online version - as a reward for working so hard on their writing.  This group has also shown a huge improvement in their writing from our first lesson.  We even looked back and compared the amount of writing they did this time to their first attempt.  It is great seeing them grow in this area of our lessons!

On Thursday, it was back to exploring shapes.  To introduce our new topic we looked back at our Hunt for the Shapes activity from the beginning of the year.  As a class, we worked on a list of attributes for 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional shapes.  They seemed to have a pretty good knowledge on the difference of "flat" to "standing out" between the two.  One of our focuses we added onto the class list was our 2-D shapes have length and width and out 3-D shapes have length, width and height.  

They were also surprised to learn that we could say our 3-D shapes our made up of our 2-D shapes - when we look at their faces.  This introduced the terms: face, vertex and edge.  From here we looked back at our shapes and had two groups - polyhedra and non-polyhedra.  We started to define the attributes to these two groups which led us into discussing prisms and pyramids.  They started working on examining the shapes further by completing Taking a Look at a Polyhedra.  On this sheet, they had to look at shapes and count the number of faces, vertices and edges of each one.  We went over a lot of information today and will continue with our focus on 3-D shapes next week.

IMPORTANT DATES:

December 19th:  Holiday Parties

December 21st - January 3rd - Winter Recess

January 4th - Class Resumes

January 13th - End of Second Grading Period