Remembering Martin Luther King

This week we continued to remember the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. On Tuesday, students watched his entire I Have a Dream speech and talked about the persuasive techniques he used to try to make the entire country aware of the injustices that were occurring in the south. They also worked in cooperative groups to read a story about his life and answer some very thoughtful comprehension questions based on the piece.

In language arts, we spent another week reading some fantastic mentor texts designed to continue to expose children to persuasive writing. Some of the books we read included Hey, Little Ant and The Great Kapok Tree. During independent reading, students wrote persuasive letters to me or to a friend about a favorite book from their just right book box.

In Writer's Workshop, students are adding details and examples to strengthen their arguments for their persuasive letters. In particular, they are working on creating strong leads and opening paragraphs that will hook their readers.

We are moving right along in math, learning about the 9's tables in Module 3. Since some of the lessons have been redundant, we have been able to skip some of them. As a result, we are about 3/4 of the way done with this Module and will likely take the end of module assessment by the end of next week! Since this module builds on previous knowledge and strategies students have gained in previous lessons, they've had an easier time applying that information to higher numbers as they multiply and divide.

On Friday, we read Snowflake Bentley, the story of the man who first photographed snowflakes a century ago. In addition to this story, we looked at some of the thousands of pictures of actual snowflakes he took and saw a brief movie about his life and work. We also make beautiful snowflakes of our own to decorate our classroom since it doesn't seem like we're going to get much real snow this year.

Next week our class will move on to Ms. Bengston for science and learn about pollution and the environment.