December News

                                           

Reading

Students are working on identifying main idea and supporting details as they read nonfiction texts. They have learned sometimes the main idea is explicit and they can find it in the body of a paragraph. It may be the first or last sentence of a paragraph.  Other times it may be inferred. They have to make an inference based on the details contained in the entire paragraph and develop a main idea statement.

                                          

Writing

Students are creating a pamphlet based on what they learned about the Wampanoag Native Americans. Their pamphlet will contain written information they learned about the food, clothing, way of life, and homes of the Wampanoags.

                                        

Mathematics

Students have started a new unit in math.  They will be learning about U.S. standard and metric units of measurement for length. In addition students will delve into finding perimeter and area of objects.

                                       


Social Studies

Students will start the second part of the Native American unit in which they will learn about a different region in the United States. Students will explore the Plains Region. While studying this region they will learn about the Plains Native American's homes, food, and way of living.

LOCATION:

                                       


HOMES:

                                                 

FOOD:

                          

WAY OF LIVING:

STAY TUNED FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT IN ROOM 17....

November

Language Arts -

     

                         

Students are starting a new unit in language arts in which they will read nonfiction texts. Students are learning meta-cognitive strategies to help them with reading comprehension. One way to monitor their understanding of their reading is using fix-up strategies. 

      

                                                                   

Another concept being introduced is to stop, think and react to what they have read.  When a reader reacts, they think about how they are feeling, make a connection or ask a question about what they read.

Students have finished writing their personal narratives from the previous language arts' unit. Here are some samples of their stories.

               

Fun time on the Fireball

By Anusha

     

       Do you know what it feels like when you ride a huge roller coaster ? It was really scary and fun. “Wahoo!” I said jumping up and down. My family and I were going to Six Flags Amusement Park. I have been waiting so long to go to Six Flags so I could ride the new roller coaster, The Fireball.The T.V ads were really awesome and thrilling. When my family and I got there I saw a lot of my friends and my sister’s friends. I wanted to go to The Fireball right away. I asked my dad, “Can Akash and his dad come with us? He said, “They can come if they want.” I was so excited. When we got there, there was a long line. I didn’t care. I would do anything to go on that ride! When it was our turn, I was really scared. When we got on one of the sections, I buckled up really tight. As the ride started I closed my eyes clutching the cold, hard bar. When we were upside down my dad said,”Open your eyes Anusha!” I didn’t want to but I did. Guess what? It was really fun! I wanted to do it again and again and so did Akash.That’s when I learned fun things happen to you when you are brave. 

The Viola Performance

by Nikhil  

Have you ever performed and played an instrument in front of complete strangers? Voooooooorm ! The car started. I got in with my viola and books. I was nervous and excited at the same time. It was the first time I  had a performance. The place where the recital was a half an hour drive but it felt like 2 hours. When  we got there I didn’t want to go in but I kept it to myself. When we got in the place there was a table with lots of food. I saw the older kids setting up. I sat down in a chair feeling worried. My parents said, “Are you ready?” I said, “Yes.” But I didn’t  really mean it. Then people started coming in. I was  pacing around thinking about all the possible things that could go wrong. All of a sudden it was my turn. I ran to my parents and started crying a bit. Then both my parents said, “Be brave!” I got my viola out of the case. I started playing the first song. I was sweating like a rain storm on my face but then I realized everybody was cheering. That gave me the confidence so then I played feeling confident. By the time it was over I wanted to do it again. My viola teacher said, “You did great!” but sadly I had to leave. The moral is always have confidence.         

          

In math students are being introduced to multiplication through the context for learning lessons called Grocery, Stamps, and Measuring Strips.

                               

                

Students were presented with the produce section of a grocery store whereby they were to calculate the total of the items displayed in the grocery store. 

                                 

Some students used repeated addition, others applied skip counting and finally some utilized multiplication strategies to figure out the total. 

Then students were shown groups of stamps and asked to find the totals of these.

                                                          

Finally students had to create their own arrays of stamps, assign a value for the stamps and calculate the totals.

 Students just finished writing stories about their Native American Puppets. The stories included their Native American name and the origins of their name. Students wrote about their character traits and examples of these traits. Then students depicted their Native American family. Last, students related the daily jobs that their character performed as a child, mom, or dad in their family.

                                                                 

Students will now transfer their learning of Native Americans to a nonfiction writing piece as part of this unit.

UNTIL NEXT TIME....

                               

Welcome Back to the 2016-2017 School Year

Language Arts

                                 

Students will delve into a reading and writing unit in which they will explore the character's feelings and character traits.  Students will read various stories as a whole class.


After reading students will brainstorm a list of feeling words.






Following this, students will explore the feelings of the characters in the stories they read and explain what evidence from the story supports the feelings they have chosen. After describing a character's feelings as a whole class, with a small group, and with a partner, students will apply this newly learned information to their guided reading group books. When they read in a small group, they will be expected to discuss and respond to questions related to the character's
feelings.
             

Furthermore, students will differentiate between character's feelings and a character's traits. Once they understand this, students will formulate a list of character traits.  Students will then review the stories read so far and choose a character trait for each character and provide examples from the story to support the character trait they chose.


                           

Writing               

The writing performance task for this unit involves students writing a personal narrative about a time they made a choice or decision and how it affected others. In order for students to be prepared for this, the class listens to and reads stories in which the character's have experiences which are relevant to the kind of personal narrative they will be writing.  Some stories the students have heard are:

Ira Says Goodbye     


Ira Sleeps Over           



 Too Many Tamales       



  and The Honest to Goodness Truth.

Following this, students will explore some ideas for their writing topic. The class will brainstorm a list of their ideas in an effort to help inspire each other.  Then students will use a graphic organizer of their choice to outline the story they plan to write.  From this point, students will discuss the techniques of a strong lead or entertaining beginning.  Then students will start the writing process.  They will share their writing with each other and discuss ways to add more elaborative detail.  They will conference with each other as well as the teacher.

Mathematics

Students are learning to add and subtract three digit numbers.  They will use their understanding of place value to help them with their calculations.

When adding and subtracting, one strategy students use is a number line.











Another strategy students will employ is breaking the number apart.


                              

Social Studies

Our class has started the Native American unit in which students will study about the Wampanoag Native Americans.  They will learn about their way of living, the foods they ate, the houses they lived in and how they used their environment to survive.

As part of this unit, students visit Wood Memorial Library on a field and have first hand experience on the tools the Native Americans made, the food they ate and the way they lived.

Language Arts

Students are in the process of learning the characteristics of poetry and the differences between poetry, narrative and expository writing.  Students will learn that poetry has stanzas and lines rather than paragraphs and sentences. Students carry over their understanding of main idea/theme into poetry. As students read poems they come to realize that poets use sequence just like writers do in their writing pieces. Students have the experience to read and discuss various poems.  They analyze what the poet is writing about and this leads to a discussion about literal and nonliteral meaning of words. After reading a story about Amelia Bedelia, students recognize that Amelia takes everything people say literally. From this point, students will explore similes, metaphors and personification in poems and analyze them.

                           



The first poems students will write are free verse. Free verse poems are taught by having students write a short paragraph about a topic. Then they break it down by putting slash marks where they want to emphasize important points.  Next they write the short phrases in a tower format. After this, they choose only the most important words to create their free verse poem. Below are some examples of free verse poems from this class.

Snakes 

by Logan

Snakes SSS!

wiggles

coils

attacks its prey

squeezes

eats it whole

Rabbits

Frogs

and Eggs too

Squeeze!

Squeeze!

Gulp! Gone!

Dogs

by Cassie

Dogs

Fluffy and cute

But can't be mute

Bark like crazy

Pet them

Stop barking

Love dogs

How about you?

Fish

by Mason

Slimey fish

Hard to catch

Beta fish

Rainbow colored

Fun Pets

Then students wrote shape poems.  A shape poem is a poem written in the form of the topic. Below is an example of shape poem.

                                                   

Next students learn to write a haiku.  A haiku is a Japanese poem which involves 5 lines. The first line has 5 syllables, the second has 7 syllables, and the last has 5 syllables. Below are some samples of students' work.

Summer

by Siri

      Yummy lemonade

Relaxing in the cool pool

      Going to the beach

Flowers

by Janani

   Different flowers

Roses, orchids, sunflowers

   Come at spring and go

Math

In math students are extending their understanding of addition and subtraction by combining numbers in the hundreds to the l,000. Students will be subtracting multiples of l00 and adding multiples of l0 and l00 to and subtracting them from 3 digit numbers. Students will be performing these operations within the context of word problems.  Students will continue to use number lines, pictures,  and the l00 grid to help visualize these operations.

                        
Students start with paper clip problems. The premise is that each box of paper clips contains l00 paper clips. Students are offered different scenarios involving problems with combining boxes of paper clips.

Science
Students are studying plants.  They learned the parts of a seed. They compare a dried bean seed and a seed soaked in water for 24 hours. Students are able to take the seed coat off the soaked seed and break it open to find the cotyledon and embryo. 





Then they experience planting a fast growing plant called a Brassica plant.  Students will observe the plant cycle of this plant. Students are illustrating, writing about what they noticed and measuring the growth of these plants.  Then they will make a bee stick and reenact the pollination process using the bee. 

                                 

March News

In Language Arts students are reading nonfiction texts and discussing how to make inferences.  They have learned there is a formula they use in order to do this.

BK (background knowledge) + TC (text clues) = Inference

First students used this new information to make inferences about vocabulary in a nonfiction article. Then they used it when looking at headings and subheadings. Students learned the importance of being good reading detectives by making sure they had enough background knowledge before they could make an inference. Below is a youtube lesson on inferencing.

Students are also returning to the concepts of main idea and supporting details from an earlier unit in the year. When students read articles they are keeping in mind what the big idea is of a paragraph and of an article.  Also they are looking for clues from the important details in an article to determine the main idea.

                                    

In math students have just completed a unit on multiplication entitled Muffles Truffles.  Here is a short video describing the scenario that students started with before they undertook this unit.

Students will use doubling, halving, the commutative property of multiplication and the distributive property of multiplication throughout this unit. The problems become more complex as the unit evolves. Ask your child what they learned from this unit of study?

In social studies the students are learning about North American explorers.  At this point they have studied the Vikings.

                                  

                    

After students studied the Vikings they wrote an opinion essay entitled, Would you want to be a Viking? They used various sources to support their opinion. Below is a sample of a student's work.

                                                      Would you Want to be a Viking?

By Kyden

I would want to be a Viking. There were brave. The Vikings sailed across the sea and they did not know what was out in the unexplored places. They also fought in wars and could have died. Vikings hunted very large animals. Large Animals are deadly.

Another reason I would want to be a Viking is they were good sailors. The Vikings used birds to find land. If birds were flying a certain direction that means land is near. Vikings used the sun and stars to find their way around. Vikings also found Greenland, Iceland and Vinland. These lands were not discovered yet.

Another reason is Vikings were good with cooperation. Vikings worked together to build ships. If they did not work together the ships would be all messed up. When Vikings fought in wars they had to work together. If they didn’t, they would all be dead. Vikings hunted together. If they split up they would not catch an animals and have food. Then they would starve. That is why I would want to be a Viking.