We finished our read aloud 7 X 9 = Trouble by Claudia Mills.
We just started Wish by Barbara O'Connor.
Eleven-year-old Charlie Reese has been making the same secret wish every day since fourth grade. She even has a list of all the ways there are to make the wish, such as cutting off the pointed end of a slice of pie and wishing on it as she takes the last bite. But when she is sent to the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina to live with family she barely knows, it seems unlikely that her wish will ever come true. That is until she meets Wishbone, a skinny stray dog who captures her heart, and Howard, a neighbor boy who proves surprising in lots of ways. Suddenly Charlie is in serious danger of discovering that what she thought she wanted may not be what she needs at all.
Prior to vacation and just after we read a variety of fables. Students learned that based on a Greek slave by the name of Aesop, fables were oral stories told to teach a moral or lesson. The stories were short and involved animals as characters.
Students learned the morals: Slow and steady wins the race. Beware of flatterers. And many more...
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| Fables as Readers' Theater! |
On Friday we started a new unit on realistic fiction. Students will read Amber Brown is Not a Crayon and then will be moving on to read a realistic fiction book of their choice.
Our work will look at structures of realistic fiction. We will read, discuss, and write about the character's traits, problem, and steps taken toward a solution.
In Math we have been working on a variety of topics including reading, making, and analyzing graphs. We graphed out favorite Girl Scout cookies - Thin Mints! We have also been working addition and subtraction with regrouping. This week we spent some time on multi-step word problems. I am really trying to REINFORCE the idea that students need to start by READING the problems carefully and finding out WHAT the question is asking. Some of the questions they are answering have more than one step and require more than one answer.
On Friday we played several rounds of
MULTIPLICATION B-I-N-G-O! There are many students who still need to work on mastery of their facts. Continued practice at home is encouraged. Flash cards, websites, and games with dice are great and easily accessible.
Prior to vacation, students completed the final drafts of their non-fiction books. They look great.
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| Writers hard at work! |
In Science we just started a new unit on Water and Climate. Our first two lessons looked at:
- What happens when water falls on different surfaces?
- How does water move on a slope?
These two hands on activities asked groups to experiment and investigate these questions.
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| Watching water drops race! |
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| New vocabulary: domes, beads, absorb, repel |
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| Using eyedroppers to investigate water on surfaces. |
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| The green table looks at water on four different surfaces. |
Out class really enjoys reading Scholastic News. Recently we read about the Great Molasses explosion in Boston on January 15, 1919. They were fascinated by the story and had so many questions.
Here are a few other issues we enjoyed!
