Week in Review

This week we continued to work on place value as we focused on decimals. We worked in small groups and pairs as we worked on tenths and hundredths. We also continued to review multiplication and created the multiplication charts for each family to have as a resource while we are still working on our facts.

We began to talk about the attributes of a leader as we learned about Martin Luther King Jr. We viewed a video of him as well as researched information on the internet to find out what made him a great leader. We will continue to learn about the attributes of a leader when we work on our Civil Rights unit in March.

This week Flat Stanley arrived! This time he traveled to Ft. Collins, Colorado! So far, Flat Stanley has traveled 15,384 miles this school year and we are still waiting for him to return from several locations around the globe!

We continued to listen to Mrs. Griswold read the book A Wrinkle in Time. Our vocabulary words this week were gallivant, defiant, infuriate, somber, ominous, and deviate. The students worked in pairs to come up with examples for the words.

What are some things that could infuriate you?

• if you got an F- on your test
• not getting any presents for your birthday
• not getting any presents on Christmas

When might you have an ominous feeling?

• if you are driving in the middle of the night
• if you see dark clouds (a storm coming)

What are some things that you might be somber about?

• a funeral
• a sick pet or when a pet dies

When have you been defiant?

• not getting off of the computer
• not cleaning my room
• not stopping watching T.V.
• not doing my homework

When might you need to deviate?

• if you're in danger
• if you're in trouble

As we continued to work on the moon and space, we searched for information and answers to our own questions on the internet and in informational texts. Many of the students also viewed videos as we learned more about the moon and space. As we viewed the videos and read informational texts about space, the students identified the Very Important Points as we are continuing to work on summarizing. Madi, Ava, and Josie performed read alouds based on information they found in informational texts. Each student also read the book What the Moon is Like and identified Very Important Points (VIP's) from the text. Here are a few of the VIP's identified by the students:

• The moon is a dull, grayish brown.
• The moon gets up to 250 degrees at day and down to 290 degrees below zero at night.
• You would be lighter on the moon than Earth. If you weigh 60 pounds on Earth you are only 10 pounds on the moon.
• Holes in the moon were made by rocks that crashed into the moon.
• Day on the moon lasts for 2 weeks and night lasts for 2 weeks.
• 12 people have landed on the moon.

This week we also searched for, identified, and began researching our constellations. Next week each student will present his/her research to the class as well as create their constellation on black poster board. The students will have the choice to either recreate their chosen constellation or create a new constellation. 

Week in Review

This work we worked on place value and determining the values of numbers up to the millions place. The students chose a city/state/country and found the population; they paired up to compare their numbers and explain the value of each number. We will continue to work on place value next week as well as continue our multiplication review.

The students came up with examples of situations or sentences using our vocabulary words. There were some very creative examples!

We continued to work on our book club groups, Flat Stanley: Stanley in Space and Magic Tree House: Midnight on the Moon. We are working on finding the important points and summarizing when we read.

In our Moon/Space unit, the students have chosen a variety of activities to complete as they discover and learn about space, including researching questions (using the internet and/or books), reading space/moon books and recording the VIP's (Very Important Points), viewing moon videos and recording the VIP's, reading and categorizing our space sentences, and preparing read alouds to share with the class. We will continue our space unit with a trip to the Planetarium on Thursday.

Next week we will be working on goal setting; please send a 3-ring binder to be a data notebook and keep track of our individual goals.

Monday, January 10, 2011

We worked on Place Value today; identifying the value of each digit. We worked in pairs as we created our own numbers, read them, and quizzed each other on the values of each digit.

Abby, Madi, and Sabine performed read alouds about interesting information they found in our moon/space informational books. We are excited about our upcoming field trip to the Planetarium on January 20.

We continued to listen to Mrs. Griswold read A Wrinkle in Time. Our vocabulary words this week are apprehension, furtive, tangible, incomprehensible, potent, and solemn.

We started our Moon/Space book club groups today. One group is reading Flat Stanley: Stanley in Space, while the other group is reading Magic Tree House: Midnight on the Moon. Today we wrote out our predictions of what we thought would happen in the story.

Friday, January 7, 2011

As we have been reviewing math concepts, we took addition, subtraction, and multiplication timed tests this week. We timed ourselves to see how long it took for us to complete 50 problems of each! We are working on becoming more efficient and accurate at our facts. We also worked in partners to practice our multiplication facts!

We reviewed cursive Aa and Cc and learned how to write the letter Oo. We will continue to work on cursive writing. Feel free to practice at home, see the link (on the side of this page) to a website in which cursive handwriting sheets can be printed out for the students to practice at home.

During Science, the students were able to choose 2 of the following activities to complete:

• Read the moon/space facts from our sentence set
• Categorize the moon/space facts
• Read a book or books about space
• Plan a read aloud for the class
• Research a question from our list that we compiled (using the internet or books)

Ava shared a read aloud for us about what the moon is made of. Three other students prepared read alouds to share with the class on Monday.

This week we finished our Flat Stanley Mexico and Japan books. The students worked on writing a summary of the story they read. We are working on summarizing what we've read by picking out the most important points and writing them in our own words.

Next week we will begin our book club groups with student choice of books. One group will be reading Flat Stanley in Space while the other group will be reading Magic Tree House: Midnight on the Moon. We will continue to work on summarizing as well as developing different levels of questions as we work through these books!

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

This week we have been reviewing math concepts, including geometrical shapes, multiplication, and three and four digit addition. We will continue to review these concepts as well as others this week.

We have begun our Moon & Space Unit. We have been reading and categorizing facts about the moon and space as well as having read alouds about the moon. We are also focusing on the genres of Science-Fiction and Informational texts. Mrs. Griswold is reading aloud one of her favorite science-fiction books, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L'Engle. Our vocabulary words come from the first three chapters of the book and they include smug, dubious, indignant, inadvertently, belligerent, and cunning. We have learned the meanings of these words, added them to our vocabulary journals, and used them in our speaking and writing. We will continue to work on these words all week and will get new words from the next few chapters next week.

We reviewed using commas in a series and began working on using commas when giving more information about words in our sentences. We used our current or previous vocabulary words in our sentences.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Today in Math we focused on geometry and problem solving as we learned about tangrams, created our own tangrams, and created designs/objects with them. The students were very creative!

We worked on the use of commas in a series. The students were able to create their own sentences using commas in a series of items they would like for Christmas.

We continued to work on our book club books, Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: The Japanese Ninja Surprise and Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: The Amazing Mexican Secret.

We continued to work on cursive writing, practicing the letters Aa and Cc.

Today we had Spanish, PE, and Guidance.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

In Math we chose one of our created shapes from the 4 triangle problem and rotated it many times to create a unique design.

We worked on creating some things for Dr. Cryer today. These are a surprise!

We brainstormed things we know and things we want to know about the moon and space. Our Science unit for January and February will focus on these two topics. The students are very eager to learn more about the moon and space and love to share the things they already know!

Today we had PE and Art.

Monday, December 13, 2010

We had a 2 hour delay today!!

We finished our 4 triangle problem today! We created 14 different shapes (triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons) using 4 triangles.

We read a Japanese folktale, The Tale of the Mandarin Ducks, by Katherine Paterson. Our new vocabulary words are captivity, luster, relegated, condemned, and impenetrable.

We received letters and cards from our Georgia pen pals! We made cards for them!

Today we had Health and Music.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Today was spirit day! We had a lot of orange and black in our classroom/school today!

We started the 4 triangle problem today in Math. The students worked in groups to create new shapes using 4 triangles. They created triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons. We will continue to work on this next week.

We began working on cursive today. We identified the cursive letters that are similar to and different than their print version. We focused on writing the capital and lowercase a today.

Today we had Spanish, PE, Library, and Music.

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

In Math we learned about angles. We learned that angles are two rays that meet at an endpoint. We learned about right, acute, and obtuse angles. We found examples of right angles in our classroom, including the windows, mailboxes, whiteboards, computer monitors, and our desktop nametags. We used our bodies and pipe cleaners to create the three different types of angles.

We read and categorized our facts about the countries we have been learning about. The categories included the population of the countries, capitals of the countries, food, land formations, and weather.

To practice our vocabulary words, we worked in small groups to brainstorm examples of things that would make us content, things that would put us in distress, and things that we would be desperate for.

We wrote Important Thing poems about our favorite holiday people/animals, including Santa, Rudolph, Mrs. Claus, and elves. These will posted on the blog with the illustrations made by the students.

Today we had Spanish, PE, and Guidance.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

In Math we learned about parallel and intersecting lines. We went on a geometry hunt looking for parallel and intersecting lines in our classroom and our school.

We continued to work on our vocabulary words this week. The students came up with their own examples of the words.

We wrote persuasive letters to Santa or our parents/grandparents trying to convince him/them to get us the things we want for Christmas.

Mrs. Griswold is reading aloud the book My Name is Maria Isabel, which is about a girls' pride in her heritage as well as the challenges of fitting in to a new environment. This book goes along with our work on learning about different cultures.

Today we had PE and Art.

Monday, December 6, 2010

In Math we learned about lines, line segments, and rays.

We read a German folktale today, The Fisherman and his wife, and we learned our new vocabulary words:
wretched: unhappy or feeling bad/sick
content: happy and satisfied with the way things are
distress: in danger and needing help
desperate: wanting something so much that you would be willing to do or say almost anything
rage: uncontrollable anger

We worked in pairs to complete a venn diagram comparing the countries we've been researching (Germany, Japan, and Mexico) to our own country. We will be using these to help us write comparison and contrast paragraphs.

Today we had Spanish, Health, and Music.

Friday, December 3, 2010

In Math we created multiplication riddles. We shared these with a partner and the class.

Today we wrote letters to a friend or family member in order to convince them to read the book Pedro and the Padre. We shared our letters with a partner.

We started reading our books for book clubs. One group is reading Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: The Amazing Mexican Secret and the other group is reading Flat Stanley's Worldwide Adventures: The Japanese Ninja Surprise. We are reading these books to support our work on the countries we have been learning about in social studies.

Today we had Spanish, PE, and Art.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

In Math we worked in pairs and the large group to come up with things that come in 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s, and 10s. These are some of the things we came up with:

Comes in 2s
shoes
hands
ears
eyes
legs
arms
thumbs
twins
wheels on a bike

Comes in 3s
sides of a triangle
triplets
wheels of a tricycle

Comes in 4s
quadruplets
legs on a cat (and other animals)
sides on a square, rectangle, and diamond
wheels of a bike with training wheels

Comes in 5s
fingers on one hand
school days in a week
toes on one foot
sides of a pentagon
quintuplets

Comes in 6s
sides of a hexagon
legs on an insect

Comes in 7s
days of the week
Harry Potter series

Comes in 8s
legs on a spider
legs on an octopus
sides of an octagon

Comes in 9s
squares on a tic-tac-toe board

Comes in 10s
fingers on 2 hands
toes on 2 feet

We chose from this list to create multiplication problems. For example, one student drew 5 spiders, with 8 legs each, creating the multiplication problem of 5x8=40.

We wrote a story based on the Mexican Folktale that we have been reading, Pedro and the Padre. Our vocabulary words this week came from the story: mischievous, saturate, cringe, penitence, skeptic, and retrieve.

Today we had Spanish, PE, Library, and Music.

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

In Math we continued to work on multiplication. We used arrays to help us solve multiplication problems.

We had our popcorn party today to celebrate meeting (and exceeding) our reading goal of 8,000 minutes in 2 weeks! We also watched the movie American Legends to finish our Tall Tale unit.

Today we had PE, Art, and our November Citizenship Assembly.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Thanks to all of the parents, grandparents, and siblings who came to our Readers' Theatre performances today! We are so glad we could share our hard work with all of you! If you didn't make it, we videotaped it and we will get it to you as soon as possible.

We played Multiplication Baseball in Math today. We rolled the dice to create and practice our multiplication facts.

Abby, Madi, and Emma performed Read-Alouds about their country today. We learned that there are more than 80 million people who live in Mexico and we learned about some of the history of Germany, thanks to our readers.

We had our spelling test. The students who missed words will be able to retake the test next week as we will not have a new set of words. They will be bringing home the words this weekend to practice for next week's test.

Today we had Spanish, PE, and Art.

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Today in Math, we continued to work on fact families. We worked in pairs to create and solve fact family problems using fact family triangles.

We performed our Johnny Appleseed and Paul Bunyan Readers' Theatres for the kindergarten and first grade classes. Don't forget our performances tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.

We had a read aloud today about families in Mexico. We found out that the average Mexican family is 6-10 people and that Mexican women usually live with their parents until they get married. Many Mexican families include multiple generations.

We continued to practice our spelling words and search for words that had sh, ch, and th in them. We will have our test tomorrow.

Today we had Spanish, PE, Library, and Music.

Wednesday November 17, 2010

Today we learned about multiplication and division fact families. We were given numbers and had to create fact families about those numbers.

Madi, JaShon, and Sabine performed read alouds for the class on the countries they are studying. We learned some very interesting information from them as well as through our research we are doing in books and on the internet.

We read our tall tales today and started writing our descriptive paragraphs about our tall tale character. We also practiced our tall tales readers' theaters. We hope you can attend one of our performances on Friday.

We are going to adopt a soldier and collect items to send to him for Christmas. These items are due by December 1.

We had Spanish, PE, and Guidance today.

Monday, November 15, 2010

Happy 9th birthday Madi! Thanks for bringing cupcakes for the class!

Today we had our spelling pre-test. This week's words each contain two letters that make one sound: sh, ch, th, wr, and ck. We will have our test on Friday.

In Math we worked on multiplication and division. We related them to addition and subtraction as we solved several problems together and independently.

We read the story Davy Crockett Saves the World and learned 5 new vocabulary words: concoction, sauntered, commence, singed, and discombobulated. We also started reading our chosen tall tales and listed vocabulary words we wanted to learn more about. The students chose from the following tall tales: Mike Fink, Paula Bunyan, Sally Ann Thunder Whirlwind Crockett, John Henry, and Library Lil.

We received another Flat Stanley today! This Flat Stanley traveled all of the way to Santa Cruz, California and back! So far, Flat Stanley has traveled 13,498 miles!

Friday, November 12, 2010

We finished our ITBS testing today!!

We began learning about three of the countries that Flat Stanley is visiting/has visited. The students chose the country they wanted to learn and research about. The students will be presenting information to the rest of the class through read alouds, writing paragraphs, and giving a presentation at the end of the unit.

Germany: Madi, JaShon, Abby, and Ian
Japan: Sabine, Collin, Ava, and Josie
Mexico: Julia, Sam, and Emma

This afternoon we wrote descriptive paragraphs about Pecos Bill in small groups. Next week we will write our own paragraphs about the tall tale character we have chosen to study.

We are no longer bringing home reading logs to record our daily reading time. Instead, the students will be entering this information on the wiki. This will allow students to be able to share what they're reading with each other as well as reduce the amount of paper being used. Below is the link to the wiki:

http://mrsgriswoldsreaders.wikispaces.com/