Week in Review: September 29 - October 3

This week in science, we read a book called Common Ground, all about the problems our world faces if we continue using natural resources at our current rate. Students were grouped according to their interest (over-fishing, deforestation, overuse of fossil fuels, and water pollution and waste) and are working on designing and presenting a problem/solution poster. We will wrap these up on Monday.

This book and poster design was just a quick activity to get them thinking about natural resources as we get ready to delve into our Project Based Learning on conservation. On Friday morning, we joined with Mrs. Swyers class to do a quick write activity on what conservation means to us. It will be so interesting to see their growth in knowledge and thinking from what they wrote on Friday, to what they will be able to write by the end of the year about conservation. After the writing time, we dug through a pile of trash (clean trash, no worries!) and sorted it into different types of trash (plastic, paper, aluminum, etc.) It was interesting to see how plastic was by far the largest pile of trash!

Viewing pictures of landfills.

Sorting trash

Only one of TWO tables full of plastic trash

In writing, we focused on two important skills: writing a strong lead to catch our reader's attention, and using vivid vocabulary to really help our reader's visualize what we are writing about. This tied in really well with reading workshop, as we discussed how good readers visualize as they are reading.

Students draw a visualization as I read Night in the Country, without showing them the pictures!

We then reread the story as students shared their drawings.

It was interesting to see how our visualizations compared to the illustration in the book.

We also practiced reading non-fiction text with our weekly issue of Time for Kids. Now that our reading testing is done, I was able to spend time teaching strategies for reading comprehension and being able to find support for the questions.

In math, we are continuing with addition strategies, and began working on subtraction by midweek. Using a number line for subtraction proved to be a favorite strategy. We did lots of number line practice on the white board, and on our individual desks...writing on the desks is always a favorite activity of the students! We spent Friday afternoon playing review math games on the laptops, while I pulled small groups of students to check their understanding of the number line strategy.

Just an FYI for next week...I will be out on Thursday October 9 for my second day of TAG training. Mrs. Satori is scheduled to sub for us, but as we know from last time, sometimes issues come up (ie. sick kid at home), and it doesn't always work out. Even with the last minute change in subs last time, the class did a great job, and accomplished everything I wanted them to do.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! Our family is off to Dallas to visit the State Fair with my younger sister.