BAILLY'S SUPER WORD OF THE WEEK
STAY HEALTHY!!! I miss you!!
This flu hasn't been very nice to my classes. I hope everyone who is sick gets plenty of rest, hydration, and lots of vitamins!!
1st GRADE LA
Letters truly are *MAGIC*
Letters truly are *MAGIC*
Word ladders: Last week the class was introduced to word ladders. A word ladder is when you take a word and transform it into another word in steps. Each step of a word ladder can only have one letter change at a time. This was a fun and challenging way to have the students work on word recognition, spelling and phonological awareness.
Anagrams: Last week's homework introduced students to phonological awareness by asking them to rearrange the letters S,O,T,P into a word. We then defined the word anagram and practiced the concept with the words DAD (add), FLOW (wolf), and BREAK (baker). The last one was a little tricky for us. This lead us into our next book, The Great Show-and-Tell Disaster.
2nd GRADE LA
The Finish: Last week we went over our beginning of The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane predictions and our end of the book predictions. We talked about what events changed our minds. I then had the student journal what some of their 'favorites' were in the book. I wanted the students to give an example AND explanation. In second and third grade, I stress the importance of complete sentences and taking into account that many times our audience is unaware of our writing prompt. Therefore, it is imperative for writings to clearly tell and answer our prompt.This week we participated in a Socratic Seminar. This is when the class was divided into two groups, an outer circle and an inner circle. Monday the inner circle were asked a list of questions and needed to discuss the answer to each other, not me or the rest of the class. While the inner group was discussing, the outer group needed to write 2 stars, a wish and an interesting idea. The 2 stars were good discussion points, the wish was something they wished the inner group would have brought up, and the interesting idea was an idea the inner group brought up that the listener in the outer group never thought of.
3rd GRADE LA
Jane Goodall: This year we are focusing on the concept of interactions. We have noticed that interactions shape who we are. We are also seeing how interactions can identify character traits. Last week we were introduced to Jane Goodall. We watched an short clip about Jane and her early work observing and interacting with chimpanzees. This week we read the beginning of her autobiography. We discussed her first animal observation and the character traits we noticed in her and her mother because of this event. We then went around the room reading different interaction exerts from her autobiography. We will talk about these interactions next week.
4th GRADE LA
Slides: Last week and this week we have been starting and finishing our slide show presentations. We are all a little off on timing because of students getting hit with this flu bug. While I wanted to be done with the slides and monologues this week, we will need to push it back a week.
1st GRADE MA
Angles and Attributes: Last week we learned about the 3 different kinds of angles: acute, obtuse, and right. The students were given protractors made of bendy straws and with a partner had to find a specific kind of angle. Once they found the correct angle, they had to show me and then were able to look for more. They had to do this for all three types, and were fantastic at it! We then did a "Angle Sort" work sheet. Students were given different shapes and had to color coordinate the different angles they saw. Right angles had to be green, obtuse angles blue and red angles needed to be red. The worksheet helped the students take the hands on learning from the protractors/angle search to finding and labeling angles on paper.
This week we were introduced to the term attribute. We defined attribute as a describing word, a characteristic of something. The students discovered that angles are an attribute of the shape.
Our discussion of attributes lead to our One-Loop Game. In this game, I place a group of students inside a circle and a group outside. The remaining students sitting in their seats needed to identify the 'secret attribute' all their peers had in common inside the circle. The answer, they all had on blue shirts. The One-Loop Game evolved into playing it with 4 shapes, with 3 different shades, and 2 different sizes.
Our discussion of attributes lead to our One-Loop Game. In this game, I place a group of students inside a circle and a group outside. The remaining students sitting in their seats needed to identify the 'secret attribute' all their peers had in common inside the circle. The answer, they all had on blue shirts. The One-Loop Game evolved into playing it with 4 shapes, with 3 different shades, and 2 different sizes.
2nd GRADE MA
3-Denominational: Last week we had a blast dipping our 3-D shapes we created from straws and pipe cleaner into bubble solutions. The purpose of the was to see what 2-D shapes created the faces of 3-D shapes. We then had to write a Think Deeply explaining what we saw in our cube. Along with a square we saw a HYPER-CUBE!!! Our Think Deeply had us explain what the difference was between a square and a cube. As a group we distinguished the difference between faces, vertices, sides and edges we saw in the two shapes.
This week we took 3-D shapes to the next level using Tangram blocks. We used our blocks to count the edges, faces, and vertices in triangular prisms, rectangular prisms, a cube and a parallel-piped. We listed these in a chart which enabled us to see similarities. We will continues looking at these patterns next week.
3rd GRADE MA
Patterns in the 100's: The past couple of weeks we have been working on multiplies and the hundreds chart. The students had multiple hundred charts and needed to find and color different multiples in each chart. For example, for the first chart the student needed to color all the multiples of 2, red. Along with coloring in specific multiples they also needed to list different pattern they noticed. Once this was done for multiples 2-9 we made a list of all the pattern we noticed. Thursday the class was divided into partners answering questions about the different patterns seen. Exploring these patterns helps them develop a deeper understanding of the number system.
4th GRADE MA
Equivalent Fractions: The past couple of weeks we have been working on equivalent fractions. Last week the students were given a sheet of paper and were told to find the value of the following sections 5/12, 1/4, and 1/3. While finding 1/3 and 1/4 can be found easily with simple folds, the students then realized they had to use the common denominator in order to find 5/12. Once this exercise was completed we went ahead and worked on a workbook page. On this worksheet the students were asked to fold and label a separate sheet of paper according to fractional portion of 'stories' located on the font page of a 'newspaper'.
