January 17 - No School (Martin Luther King Jr. Day)
January 20 - PTO Meeting at 6PM
January 28 - Frozen Friday
February 15 - PTO Meeting at 6PM
February 18 - 21 - No School (Winter Break)
February 25 - Frozen Friday
ELA
This week, first graders reviewed the definition of anagrams and finished up a few activities making anagrams. They really nailed these!
Next, they cracked another code using a Spy Pie Cipher. The secret message revealed that "The letter E is used most often when we write".
Then we discussed lipograms. I explained to them that a lipogram leaves out a certain letter. So we rewrote the poem Jack and Jill replacing every word that contained an "e" with a word or phrase that meant about the same thing, but did not contain an "e". The poem did not flow quite as well using our replacements!
Finally, we began reading the book E-mergency by Tom Lichtenheld and Ezra Fields-Meyer. In the book, the letter "E" has an accident and is out of commission! The letter "O" steps in to do E's job. So every letter "E" is replaced with an "O". It makes for some interesting words! We will continue reading this next week.
MATH
The first graders created their own "One-Loop Puzzles" this week. Each student chose an attribute card and then drew three shapes inside of the loop that had the attribute and two shapes outside of the loop that did not have the attribute. Students then traded with a partner to figure out what the secret attribute was.
The next day, students brought their book buddies from class to sort by their attributes. This was a fun way to introduce two loop puzzles (AKA Venn Diagrams). We worked by sorting the stuffed animals by color of fur, eye color, etc. This one was different because the two attributes overlapped. Since we only had two stuffed animals, we then switched to using our shape cards and kept on playing! I gave students the opportunity to pick the secret attribute for us to guess.
Progress Reports for Second Grade:
I am working on sending home letters to all second grade parents in the district. It'll give parents a better understanding of how their child previously qualified for High Ability. It will also give you a good idea as to how students qualify for High Ability in third grade. Meanwhile, here's the link to Duneland's High Ability webpage.
ELA
In second grade, students continued working on their character traits for either Despereaux or Princess Pea. Students were to write four character traits and provide text evidence to support them. After this was complete, they colored their character and they are on display in the classroom. I will send them home in a few weeks:)
MATH
This week in second grade, we talked about faces of 3-D shapes. The cube has all square faces, while the triangular prism has triangle and rectangular faces. I had five 3-D shapes (cube, rectangular prism, triangular prism, square pyramid, and triangular pyramid) set up around the room. Students were then given a sheet to record the different faces of each. They had to write the number of triangle, square, and rectangle faces each shape had.
Thursday was bubble shape day!! We used 3D shapes that were made of straws and pipe cleaners and dipped them in bubble solution. It was exciting to see the faces made of bubble solution! I also demonstrated how to make a hypercube inside of the bubbles. The kids loved seeing that!!
ELA
Third graders were introduced to a fable this week. They read The Ants and the Grasshopper silently to themselves and then discussed with a partner. I had four questions on the board to direct their discussions. After talking with a partner for a bit, we came back together and discussed the fable as a group. We touched on some of the traits that make a story a fable. We will continue this next week.
MATH
Third grade learned "Arrow Math" this week. We used an array but it was not set up like the 100's chart we have used before. Each row in this array went to seven instead of ten. We took some time to discuss the set up. What happens if you move left one column? Right one column? Down one row? We also took time to discuss what each arrow meant. They caught on pretty quickly! It was a bit of a struggle when they arrows went off of the chart, but we worked through it.
ELA
The fourth graders are still hard at work on their biography projects! They are finishing up their timelines and will soon begin working on their slideshow, if they haven't already. They are doing an amazing job on these research projects!
MATH
We started a new lesson this week in which we looked at puzzles about fourth graders and their pets. The students job was to figure out how many of each pet the student had.
We followed George Polya's approach to problem solving as we worked through the Pet Parade puzzles. Polya outlined four steps to solving problems.
1). Understand the problem.
2). Devise a plan.
3). Carry out the plan.
4). Look back.
I explained that they may not need these steps, but it is important to learn another method to solve the problems. We solved problems together on Wednesday and they tried them out on their own on Thursday. They did awesome!
