Week in Review: September 18-22

This week in science, we wrapped up our unit on matter with an assessment on Friday. Scores are available in Home Access Center if you want to see how your child did. Earlier in the week, we completed our "Don't Sink the Boat" activity, where students designed a foil boat that would support the weight of at least 40 pennies. Some of the designs were able to support 150 pennies...and then I ran out of pennies!

This week is knows as Celebrate Freedom week, so for social studies, we have been learning about the Constitution. On Friday, we even wrote a preamble for our own class constitution! The students really enjoyed that.

In math, we are continuing to work on place value, but also moved on to rounding too. On Thursday we took a drive on the "Rounding Highway" which was a fun lesson on how to round numbers. Unfortunately, I did not get any photos of it because I was too busy "driving"...but please ask your child about it! We will start addition strategies next week.

Math stations on Wednesday: true/false proof with Mrs. Lipe, car buying with Ms. Lampkin, laptops, and an addition/subtraction pretest. They were busy, busy, busy!

In language arts, we have begun writing our first drafts of narrative pieces. The students narrowed down a big topic to a smaller moment in time in which they could elaborate with a lot of details. We have had two writing sessions of 20 minutes each and most of them are finished, or nearly finished with their roughdrafts.

Writing around the room! The students love getting to choose a spot to work.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Week in Review: September 11-15

This week in science, we have been exploring properties of matter. Students enjoyed the hands-on stations where they measured temperature and mass, determined if items were magnetic or not, and predicted whether certain items would sink of float. Next week, they will be designing their own boats that can float while holding at least 40 pennies!

In math, we wrapped up our unit on data and graphing with a test on Wednesday. We are now moving onto place value, including comparing and ordering numbers, as well as addition and subtraction.

Rolling dice to create numbers to compare and order.

Working on understanding equal groups...a precursor to multiplication which will come later in the year!

Noticing patterns on a Hundreds Board.

Building numbers on place value mats with base ten blocks, then adding and subtracting.

In language arts, we are beginning to work with mentor sentences each week. These are sentences that I choose from a book we have read that are a great example of a particular skill or writing technique I want to teach. We use the mentor sentence as a model to write our own well-crafted sentences. We are also working on narrowing down our big WATERMELON writing ideas, to a more manageable SEED idea. Ask you child what I mean about that, and let them explain to you the difference between watermelon and seed ideas.

On Friday, we celebrated International Dot Day during our E-SLOT time. We joined up with Mrs. Swyers' class and enjoyed several activities including making buddy dots, dot painting, Google Drawing with dots, and coffee filter dot art. It was a fun way to end the week!

I hope everyone has a great weekend, and remember that Monday night is Spirit Night at Baskin Robbins on Parmer Lane. I will be there scooping ice cream from 6pm-6:30pm and hope to see many of you there!