March Madness Begins

We kicked off our March Madness Book Championship this week with a bang! Students had the opportunity to read their persuasive letters to the class and to students in Ms. B's room. After, we voted to determine the Sweet 16 vote-getters. See the results of our voting below!  A schedule of our voting and activities went home on Thursday. Please make sure to check out the dates of our voting and due date for our March Madness poster/advertisement assignment. All students will be making a poster to advertise their favorite book to try to further convince the classes to vote for their book. We started making rough drafts in class, but the rest of the poster project is to be done at home. Posters are due March 18. May the best book win!

Now that we have wrapped up our writing unit on persuasive/opinion writing, we are heading back to focusing on informational writing with an emphasis on researched based writing on a particular topic. We are tying this unit into our science unit on Animal Adaptations. Students will have the opportunity to choose an animal and do research in books and online. They will learn how to take notes, eliminate extraneous information, organize their thinking, and put another writer's words into their own language. I am modeling this lesson using wolves as a subject (as voted on by the class). 

We are nearly ready to head to our last science rotation in a week or two. Having finished learning about rocks and minerals, pollution, and matter, students will be heading to Mrs. Grindrod to learn about Animal Adaptations.

In math, we took the end of module assessment for area and began fractions.  Everyone did really well on the test on area, which was especially difficult.  I am very proud of the kids for their hard work and perseverance.  To begin our unit on fractions I gave the class a mini assessment to see where their knowledge base was in order to inform where I would begin teaching.  We began with some lessons to re-familiarize ourselves with basic concepts and will move on to learn how to plot fractions on a number line.  I have some great hands-on activities and manipulatives that the children will be using to help them with a concept that tends to be intimidating (I know this by all the groans I always get each year when I announce we are about to begin our fractions unit).

It was great to finally have a full week of school!  Let spring begin!

Here are the Sweet Sixteen books that will face off in our voting next week:

The One and Only Ivan
The Giving Tree
The Witches
The Hobbit
Arnie the Doughnut
The English Roses
The Yeti Files
Percy Jackson: Lightning Thief
11 Birthdays
Dear Mrs. LaRue
Dear Dumb Diary, My Pants are Haunted
The Day the Crayons Quit
Scaredy Squirrel
From the Mixed Up Files of Miss Basil E. Frankweiler
Kickoff
Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great