Art!

We were recently very fortunate to have Mrs. O back for another awesome art lesson!  We learned all about organic and geometric shapes and we also got to do a wonderful class project J 

Each student was given different earth colored pieces of paper.  They contributed to helping build the tree trunk by cutting their paper into strips and then forming a line for the teachers to glue on the pieces.  Kids circled through the line many times- please see the “Kid Pics” link for details!

Next we learned how to make the leaves- this was a fun process and the kids loved learning how to make them and sticking them on our tree!

It was great to see the students work together to build something magnificent.  The finished project was beautiful and taller than 6 feet!  Thank you Mrs. O!

Subtraction Poem!

To coincide with the beginning of our subtraction unit, we wrote down a cute subtraction poem today that will hang in our class.  The kids had a blast rhyming to it all afternoon :)

"Travel" Partners

We began Reading Workshop this week with an analogy about how reading is like traveling- and like traveling, reading is better when you're not alone!  This past summer I traveled with my best friend Erika to Europe and am using some experiences I had to aid in teaching Reading Workshop :)

I'm finding there are so many connections, it makes workshop very fun!  For instance, it took Erika and I weeks to plan our trip because we needed to figure out what we each liked and therefore where we wanted to visit.  Similarly in Reading Workshop, students will work within their reading "families" that we started yesterday to get to know a partner of their choosing and what they each like so that they can pick books to read together.

Of course, Erika and I didn't agree 100% of the time on things we wanted to see.  I didn't share the same interest in the Tower of Pisa as she did, and she was not as enthusiastic about the hike I wanted to do in the Cinque Terre.  Although we briefly went our separate ways, at the end of those days we were each SO excited about what we'd experienced that we highly recommended our activity to each other and convinced one another to someday take part in what we'd missed :) 

Reader's do the same thing!  They make recommendations and help one another experience things they may not have otherwise experienced.

As the boys and girls get more involved with workshop, we will fill out the rest of the connections in our chart :)

** Marshmallow Mug **

Since we recently won our Marble Party by getting 100 marbles in the jar, we have officially started the process over!  The only difference this time is instead of a jar that the students are trying to fill with marbles, they have a mug that they're trying to fill with marshmallows :)  Once the mug is full, we will earn a winter party!  Class and table points are big motivators for doing our best- the kids really love their mug!

Gumby Sentences

The boys and girls have been practicing the Writing Process by prewriting, drafting, revising, and editing their work.  We are solid in our knowledge of how to create a topic sentence, come up with key ideas, and generate details. We are also good at filling out a brief outline as a part of our prewriting :) 

Transitioning from outlines to drafts is challenging because formulating full sentences from brief ones is a larger process.  To aid in this process we talked about stretching sentences- or making a "Gumby" sentence! 

We read a wonderful story called "That Rabbit Belongs To Emily Brown" about a girl with a stuffed animal rabbit named Stanley, and a vivid imagination!  In the story, the Royal Queen will do anything to get Stanley away from Emily Brown.   After we read the story we talked about some key details.  One key detail that continued to pop up was "there was a rabbit". 

You can see in the poster that we wrote this idea down.  Little by little we began to stretch the sentence by thinking more about it, and then adding more about what we knew.  We WROTE what we THOUGHT. 

The kids overwhelmingly agreed that the last sentence we formulated was the best because it was the most interesting.  As writers, we want our readers to be interested so the goal from this point forward will be to "gumby" sentences in our writing :)

Reading Workshop Launch!

We launched our Reading Workshop with a lesson on ownership!  Being responsible for your own reading life is a powerful message and one I want to send right away. Children need a clear vision of what powerful readers look like so we will build upon this image as we move through the year.

We started today by discussing what readers who are in Reading Workshop do.  Please see the above list :)  After talking about how we are in control of our own reading including what we like to read, where we read, and when we read, the students wrote on their whiteboards a favorite book they have and where they were when they read it.  Next we made a class list of all of the places we like to read, and lastly we talked about why we liked those places so much.  The idea was for the students to begin to recognize that reading is not just something we do, it's something we feel :)

We wrapped up by thinking about whether or not we could recreate some of our "favorite reading spots" in the classroom... and many spots can be closely replicated!
Today we talked about traveling shoes and how what kind of shoe you wear depends on where you're going, how far the walk is, and how big your feet are!  The take-away point for today was that THE SHOE DOESN'T ALWAYS FIT!  Similarities in our "shoes" will determine which traveling group the kids are a part of.  These will change as our feet grow, but what will never change is that travelers never travel alone. Tomorrow we will talk more about "never traveling alone" as readers.

We will work to establish reading partnerships which will foster reading histories, reading interests, and reading hopes.  I am so excited that this journey has begun :)

Math Bowling!

Today I taught the kids a new game called "Math Bowling".  Each student had a whiteboard and pen and drew 10 pins, followed by the numbers 1-10 as shown above.  I then rolled the two giant dice and using whatever 2 numbers I rolled students used addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division to cross off or "knock down" each pin. I kept track of what pairs of numbers had been rolled on the board, and students had to show how they knocked down each pin!  For example if I rolled a 3 and 2, students could knock down the 6 because 3x2=6. 

The boys and girls had so much fun with this, I think I will continue to use it as a math warm up :)

IT's ArT TiME!

We had such a great time today with Mrs. O learning all about how artists use lines in art! We talked about organic lines in nature, dotted lines, circular lines, zigzag lines and much more! We practiced making these lines on a piece of paper as you can see in the above pictures. After practicing lines we discussed shades and how to press firmly or lightly depending on what type of line you want- fair or bold. Then we added this shading to our lines practice.

Next we looked at pictures of animals and observed all the different kinds of lines on them! From there we practiced drawing the animals and then traced them in ink. The last step was to color in the picture with pastels. These turned out SO well! They will stay in our classroom for a bit before being sent hom :) Thank you Mrs. O!

Idenitfying Minerals: Scratch Test!

We have spent the last two science sessions learning all about how geologists use something called a scratch test to help determine what certain minerals are!  For this test we used a penny, a paperclip, and our fingernails as tools.  First we determined that a scratch is a permanent mark (that cannot be wiped away) left on one object by another.  You can do a scratch test on any two objects and know that the harder object will always scratch the softer object. We spent time last session using our tools to scratch different items like a tile, and some chalk.  Certain tools could scratch the items, certain ones could not.

With that in mind we spent time today using what we learned to try and identify minerals.  Each table group was able to observe a tray of 4 minerals that were only labeled by numbers.  The first mineral the boys and girls were to identify was Quartz.  I gave them a basic clue that quartz was white, and then asked if they could tell me which one was Quartz.  They quickly realized that color was not enough to identify minerals because 3 of the 4 minerals we observed were white :)  Then I told them Quartz is the hardest of the common earth minerals. 

We were able to deduce that if Quartz is the hardest, our best chance at identifying it would be with the hardest tool we have (which we tested was the paperclip- because it left a scratch on the penny). So we passed around the minerals, using our tools to scratch them to see if scratches were being made. We eliminated minerals that were scratched, because Quartz is the hardest and is harder than our tools. We will continue with the scratch tests tomorrow; can't wait!

Mulan: Chinese Writing

After finishing the story of "Mulan", the boys and girls were excited to get to try some Chinese writing of their very own!  We talked about how Chinese writing is made up of pictures called characters.  A long time ago the pictures looked like the things they stood for.  But over the centuries, the characters changed.  Over one billion people use this writing! 

In class we used a key to help us decide what characters we wanted to represent our art.  We made rough drafts and then hung the final drafts up above our Reading wall :)  These will be sent home next week!

Earth Science: Nature Vision!

Our Earth Materials FOSS science curriculum has provided many opportunities for the kids to observe characteristics of solid materials from the earth- rocks and minerals.  We have focused on geology- the study of the earth- including taking materials apart to find out what they are made of, and putting materials together to understand their properties. 

We have had a lot of fun conversations around earth materials and today we had an especially great time because we had Nature Vision!

We discussed a brief history of the earth, the different layers of the earth, and the 3 main types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.  We also talked about plate tectonics forming mountains like the many in our own state, and how the earth is constantly changing and moving!  We also talked about how you cannot see or feel it moving because it's happening so slowly- like your fingernails growing!

Here is a picture of some students using one of the science puzzle pieces we did earlier today to help them discover what kind of rock they were investigating!

Writing Stoplight!

 

Our Step Up To Writing curriculum teaches kids to write simple paragraphs in fun and memorable ways!  The 3 colors of the traffic light help us to remember key ideas. 

• Green- Topic Sentence:  Tells the reader what I am going to share, describe, explain, or prove.
• Yellow- Slow Down:  Support the topic with good details using reasons or interesting facts.
• Red- Give Examples:  Explanations and evidence bring paragraphs to life! 
• Green- Conclusion:  Use the topic sentence to remind the reader of the topic.

As we continue to grow as writers, this Writing Stoplight will prove to be very handy :)

Got GRIT?!

As we wrap up a fantastic week of learning, fun, and conferences I find myself continuing to visit the NBC video on GRIT, and thinking about what it means for our students' futures.

Perseverance is something that happens in the mind, so the way we think and talk to ourselves is essential to the idea of GRIT.

We have only scratched the surface of the topic of perseverance but my goal is for this character trait to become engrained in the kids :)  I want them to believe in themselves, as I do and as you do!  
 
This week we learned a lot about subjects/predicates- a new topic for most students.  If I ever heard a student say they "couldn't" or "I can't"- I mentioned perseverance and talked about what saying things like that does to the mind. Similarly, if I ever heard a child say "this is easy" or “I’m bored”- I mentioned perseverance and talked about how finding ways to keep busy and push your thinking is as much a part of GRIT as persevering through challenges :)

Squiz Tips

Today we brainstormed a list of basic tips to help us when we take small quizzes, or "squizzes".  The goal is for the students to utilize their time wisely and make good choices when it comes to writing down responses  - for math, science, writing, etc.

We discussed whether it's better to go fast and finish early, or go slower and give ourselves enough time to answer to the best of our ability.  Unanimously, the kids were able to state that it's better to take our time but "taking our time" can be vague so the list was created to help paint a picture of exactly what that looks like :)

4 Point Quick Check Responses

Quick checks are the EnVision end of Topic mini assessments that we take in class to see how we're understanding each area.  Today we worked through the above problem as a class.  We read the question carefully and underlined the important parts of it so that we could visibly see what our job was.  Then we went through each underlined part and made sure we followed directions. 

We also discussed what it means to "explain" something and how this is done thoroughly and thoughtfully.  The expectation is that the students can tell why they answered the way they did- it is not to repeat what they did.

It is still early in the year and my goal is for the students to grow in the area of explaining their mathematical thinking, not for them to become anxious over it :)  Therefore, we will dedicate as much time as needed to solidify this skill as it is something that will benefit the kids in all academic areas... not just math!

                                           Learning Targets

 

Learning Targets are important for so many reasons!   They're a quick and simple way for us to keep track of our daily goals, and pin-point key skills we learn and need to know.   In our classroom these targets are currently changing daily, however, once we begin longer units of study some may remain for a couple of days. 

Pairing the Learning Targets with a self-assessment at the end of each day via our "How Am I Doing" worksheet is proving to be a beneficial way for the kids to monitor their own learning.  Students are encouraged to be honest and they're reminded that these self assessments are for their benefit (not a grade).  I model how to think through this process :)