In language arts, students are learning about how to recognize, record supporting evidence, and identify motivating events that change characters in text. Each day we read a new story with a strong character and discussed and wrote about how the character changed in the story and what motivating factor caused them to change. Among the wonderful literature we read were the following titles: Julius, Baby of the World, Chyrsanthemum, Wemberly Worried, The Library Dragon, and Goldilocks and the Three Bears.
In Writer's Workshop, we continued to work on our personal narratives, adding details and working on editing and revising our stories. Students learned how to elaborate and edit as they go along. While working with their writing partners, students are gaining valuable feedback that is helping to strengthen their work as authors!
The kids are having a blast in science learning about rocks and minerals. We went on a field study on the Stepney Walking trail to discover the rocks that are located around our school. Each student got to take a rock from the field and bring it back to school to explore. We also talked about the three different types of rocks: sedimentary, metamorphic, and igneous and how they are formed, and did an experiment to discover which minerals were visible in two types of granite.
In math we have been learning about how to represent multiplication and division through a variety of strategies. Students were introduced to the commutative property and learned how to represent their thinking through arrays, bonds, count-bys (and other terms many moms and dads may not have heard of!). The students love doing our "Sprints" every day where they have to solve number sentences (addition, subtraction, repeated addition, multiplication, and division) as fast as they can. They are enjoying the challenge and thrill of seeing how they can improve their speed and accuracy each time they practice the facts over and over again.
To this end, I would encourage you to make sure your child goes on the web-based program Moby Math at least a few times a week. The information on how to log on was sent home in the Step Up Day packet, two weeks ago, and again this week. This program is invaluable for helping students build up their stamina and math fact fluency. The link for Moby Max can also be found on the "links" section of this blog above.
Ending this weeks blog with a great video that shares my philosophy that we are all students; we are all teachers! Enjoy...
NOTES:
*Please make sure your child is studying his/her spelling words for the post test on Friday! Students should be bringing home their spelling notebooks daily to help them with their homework and to help them study.
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