Read Alouds
We finished reading Chester and Gus and started reading Frindle.
The class really enjoyed Chester and Gus. After his fear of loud noises causes him to fail his service dog training, Chester, a friendly, smart chocolate Lab, becomes a support dog to Gus, a 10-year-old boy with nonverbal autism.
We also did several picture book read alouds as well, including Maddi's Fridge, which tells the story of friendship and sharing.
Each year Wheelock School does a food drive to collect items for the Medfield Food Cupboard. I like this book to share with students as we start to collect items for those in need. It shows you never really know! See what author Lois Brandt wrote about the topic.
About Maddi's Fridge
Maddi's Fridge is a story about friendship.
When I was small, I opened up my best friend's refrigerator for a snack. Her refrigerator was white empty, like a refrigerator in a refrigerator store. The only thing on the shelves was one of those tiny cartons of milk that they hand out at school with the free lunch program. My friend had saved her school milk for her little brother.
That image of my best friend's empty refrigerator has stayed with me my entire life.
MATH 
We have been working on multiplication and division facts. Students have been writing and solving their own story problems.
We have also been working on mastering our facts with fluency practice such as problems, games, and Kakooma by Greg Tang!
Check out some of the faces students made as they tried to solve multiplication problems as each round got more challenging!
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| This one makes me giggle! |
Kakooma is one of many math games on Greg Tang's website. Students can access it from the class blog! It is a fun and easy way to practice multiplication facts.
CHROMEBOOKS
Students are doing a very good job using chromebooks in school. We have been working on increasing their awareness of the keyboard and how to use different features such as filling in color, drag and drop, changing fonts, underlining, as well as typing.
Prior to Thanksgiving students made a completed a turkey as seen below and wrote a paragraph about things they were thankful for this year.
We have also used the chromebooks for our word study sentences in class.
ELA - English Language Arts
NARRATIVE WRITING
Students finished final drafts of their chosen narrative writing story. We worked on leads, telling the story bit-by-bit, and using dialogue to engage our readers. We also worked on editing strategies of when to start a new paragraph, lessons on common/proper nouns, and how to edit with a partner.
READING
We read Amber Brown is not a Crayon as a class. We had discussions about realistic fiction story elements. We used our text to see how the author uses words, actions, and thoughts to share information about main characters.
After finishing the book together, students were put in book groups to work on similar elements with greater independence. We read:
Each book has a strong MAIN character! Within their groups students answered questions, talked about story elements, and WHAT they learned about their characters by the words, thoughts, and actions.
Our next reading unit will look at POETRY!
Cursive writing, grammar lessons, Daily Language Review, and Word Study are all under the umbrella of ELA, as well. We are making our way toward the end of the lower case cursive writing letters and will start capital letters shortly.
Students continue with word work and new patterns each week. We have been looking at adding -ed and -ing to verbs. Students have been searching for these words in their writing and reading and looking at base words.
We do Daily Language Review once a week for morning work to review skills such as analogies, proper grammar selection (me or I), synonyms/antonyms, proper and common nouns, correcting sentences, and correct spelling and syllabication of words.
Sometimes we carry these skills over to Scholastic News. After reading the magazine students might be asked to do a FAST FIVE. I create them to review skills we have talked about in our writing mini lessons and with our weekly word work. The class LOVES to watch the videos that accompany many of the articles!
SCIENCE
We kicked off our Science unit Motion and Matter with experimenting with MAGNETS! This hands on activity was a huge hit and excitement ensued as students predicted and tested.
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| Talking magnets! |
We are doing a lot of writing in this science unit as we work on a FOCUS QUESTION and write about our results. Students are also drawing like scientists as well.
Next students learned about wheels and axles and had to design and test different systems using a ramp. Students learned that scientists OBSERVE... TEST... LOOK FOR PATTERNS... PREDICT.
LAST but NOT LEAST... SOCIAL COMPETENCY!
We did a lesson recently with Mrs. Bockhorst, our school guidance counselor, about EMPATHY. Students played an interactive JEOPARDY game to learn about and discuss the meaning of the word and examples of it. Students learned the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Students watched a short video with professor and researcher Brene Brown and this was MY greatest take away.
"Empathy is feeling with people." Brene Brown
Empathy - Brene Brown (video link)
AND FINALLY ... throw in a little ART!
Did you see our AMAZING Crankenstein creations? We read a book called Crankenstein and then students drew, colored, and painted their own version of Crankenstein! They are terrific.
We also just created some Snowmen Glyphs, based on students' preferences for WINTER.
