Mrs. Watson's Weekly: Thoughts on a Friday...

January 29, 2016

Nonfiction: READING!

We have been SO busy reading and writing nonfiction. We started with ants! Yes, ants! They are actually quite fascinating. Did you know they come in colors such as purple and green? They can carry 50 times their own body weight. There are also over 10,000 species of ants. We started with an ANTS web. In pencil, students wrote what they knew or THOUGHT they knew about ants. We discussed their thinking together in class. "Ants can fly," shared one student. "ALL ants can fly?" we asked. "No," was the response. So we can revise that thinking to some ants can fly. As we talked, students used a red colored pencil to add to their web things they agreed with from their peers. Ants are insects. Ants have 6 legs. Queen ants lay eggs. Now our papers were getting crowded. Then we read an article about ants. MORE FACTS! We used a new color to add more facts to our web. And our web is now the EVIDENCE of our LEARNING.

Evidence of learning web

Then we continued. Each group was given an "creature"... camels, aardvarks, octopus, and giraffes. They were asked to record what they knew or THOUGHT they knew about their animal. then we read. Did you learn new facts, confirm known facts, or did you need to change your thinking? Many students thought that camels stored water in their humps. It is NOT true, they learned. It is a rumor. The hump or humps of a camel store fatty tissue.

As we read, we made note of new and interesting vocabulary words. We came across words like camouflage, regurgitation, dromedary, and echolocation.

What do we KNOW about zebras?

The raptor group!

Comfy on the couch talking about butterflies!

Okay, so bats aren't as scary as I thought!

We also turned to books and read about the Olympics, Washington, D.C., National Parks, and many other topics. We looked for nonfiction text features and HOW they help us learn new information.

Look what I learned about BATS!

We also read some short nonfiction passages and answered short answer and multiple choice questions. We learned that nonfiction can include a flyer, a poster, an invitation, a brochure, a magazine or newspaper, or even a recipe. Learning to read each of these forms of text is different that reading fiction.

How to make Peanut Butter Balls...

Family reunion invitation... bring a tent!

Nonfiction: WRITING!

As for our own NONFICTION writing... we started with using boxes and bullets. Once we decided upon our possible chapters we were ready to start WRITING.

Planning our writing

Interesting topics!

Then we went to the library and worked with Mrs. Robertson and Mrs. Watson to RESEARCH our topic using computers, ipads, and books. We came away with resources to help us with our writing!

Mrs. Robertson reminds the third graders about
research and searching tools!

Whit gets searching

They boys are working hard!

Will adds to his schema!

In class today 1/29 we wrote our INTRODUCTIONS! We looked at expert texts and saw how they started.

How do the experts start their books?

Some began with questions, sounds, riddles, and definitions. We were ready to try out our own. After lunch we worked with a partner to PEER EDIT our work.

The girls share their INTRODUCTIONS!

GRAMMAR

We have also been working on a little grammar with possessive nouns! It started with Donavan's Word Jar. Whose words jar? Donavan's! This week we looked at singular and plural possessive nouns. How can we tell the difference between the "the dog's house" and "the dogs' house"? We will continue this lesson next week as well. It gets a little tricky!

MATH

In math, we are working on AREA! We found out that multiplication sure comes in handy now! If we know our facts, it makes finding the area of shapes that much easier. We have been working on both regular and irregular shapes.

This is a REGULAR shape!

This is an IRREGULAR shape!

The problems above can get a little dull (shhh!) so we decided to create our own SPORTS COMPLEXES. They came out AWESOME! Once they were designed, OF COURSE we had to find the AREA of these creations!