Balliey's SUPER Word of the Week:
RESPECTED: having a good opinion about you
1st Grade LA
Shield of Connections: We finished our Shields of Connections this week. Students were given time in class to practice what they wrote since their connections were written a few weeks ago. We discussed important presenter roles such as of eye contact, voice level and familiarity of content. We also talked about important roles the listeners needed to practice.The students did an AMAZING job sharing! I was more than impressed!!!! Classmates graded each other's presentations and I graded the product. I will display the Shields in class but will hand back the evaluations next week.
1st Grade MA
Short Week: Wednesday we did not have class because I was out of the building. Thursday we played Zani Lingo. WE LOVE THIS GAME! It is similar to Bingo with the goal to get four chips in a row. Our game boards are filled with different polygons. I roll a number cube and pending on the number rolled they need to put a chip on the corresponding shape. Since they now know, no polygon is made up of 1 or 2 sides, they must yell out "OH NO, NO SUCH SHAPE" when the number cube lands on a 1 or 2. I call on students to tell me the name of that shape when the number cube lands on a 3-6. Once they get four in a row they yell out "ZANI LINGO". In the near future the students will need to tell the class what polygon their chips are on for their Zani Lingo to count. I see that to be no problem for this class, they are rock stars with their vocabulary!!
2nd Grade LA
Eldorado: We are finishing up our
Eldorado lesson. This lesson has quite a few important concepts that will be used through out the year. The students were read the poem, then needed to journal what they thought the poem was about. Even though I made it clear to the students there was not right or wrong answer, this proved a difficult for some. The reasoning, the students needed to think far outside the box because of the different the metaphors in the poem, when they really just wanted to write
black or
white answers.
Having the students write what they believed the poem was about correlates with our
connection theme. I wanted to see how personal life, experiences, and feelings helped them create their 'meaning' of the poem. As a class, we shared our different ideas on what we thought
Eldorado, the knight, the shadow/shade/pilgrim meant. We also defined
metaphor and why writers may use them. We then and discussed what the metaphors in the poem meant.
Last, we filled out a
READING ANALYZER, remember this name, you will being seeing them a lot. A reading analyzer is a tool we use to help take our reading comprehension to a deeper level. By using this tool, we were able to grasp a better understanding of
Eldorado. This will be a tool we use regularly during the year.
2nd Grade MA
Lines of Symmetry: We have been working with lines of symmetry for the past couple of weeks. This bunch is getting pretty good with it! We are using lines of symmetry in a square to create triangles. Students needed to fold, draw and cut these lines making triangles to create new squares. This activity allows students to manipulate the triangles creating patterns and designs. We will then need to find lines of symmetry in our new squares after throwing in the element of different colors. We know the lines of symmetry in a square, now we need to make sure the colors are symmetrical as well.
3rd Grade LA
Interactions and Character Traits: We read the book
THE GIRL WHO LOVED WILD HORSES. While reading to the class they needed to fill out a worksheet listing different interactions they characters had. Once the story was over they were able to work in groups and share the interactions they found. We had to take a double look at interactions and what defines an interaction. Some of the students were getting confused with cause and effect verses interactions.
THE GIRL WHO LOVED WILD HORSES. We will continue this next week.
One key difference, in an interaction there is an exchange between those involved. Next, we looked at what the interactions showed us about the character, their character traits. We are using this list to write a character trait paragraph for the girl in
3rd Grade MA
Think Deeply: We have begun our second Think Deeply. Almost everyone understood our first Think Deeply asking to find the 137th letter in a repeating pattern of SARAH. Having 5 elements in the pattern, it was easy for the student to figure out. However in the next one, student are needing to find the 137th letter of a repeating pattern for SAM and it's proving to be difficult. We will be finishing this together next week to make sure we have 100% understanding!!!
4th Grade LA
Changes in Vocabulary: We have been looking at the change in Language. This week we finished up our Greek and Latin Word Element Packets. The students have read how our language is filled with Greek and Latin elements and why/where they came from. They were given a list list of Greek and Latin prefix, suffix, and roots along with the meaning. The students then needed to use the word element charts and give the meaning of the word.
This allowed them to see, how we have developed words in our language. Using the element charts they were asked to make up their own words and define them. They found a lot of the words they wanted to put together were already real word. As for the others, they were VERY CREATIVE!!
Beginning with the end in mind-we are working towards a MAJOR Biography project that will start towards the end of September. Now is a good time to start the conversation with your child about who they'd like to research. They will really dig deep with this person, so if they already have an interest in them, it will be a win-win. Almost anyone will work for this project, but they need to be able to justify it. They need to be able to tell how their person was an agent of change . . .how they made a difference in the world! You could even start browsing your local library to see if they have any books or check on Amazon. They will need two reliable sources. One may be an online source, so we will talk about acceptable ones later. We will use the library books here at school, but they may not have the specific person they are looking for. Have your child check our library out now. They may need to bring them in from the public library. Don't check them out just yet. At this point, we are being proactive which will help a GREAT deal down the road. Thank you!
4th Grade MA
Think Deeply: I think we have mastered
equivalent fractions! I will find out for sure after reading everyone's Think Deeply, but I think we got it! This week we worked with our fractions strips and white boards to prepare for our Think Deeply. They were able to see equivalent fractions using our fraction strips, we saw that 2/8 and 1/4 have the same (EQUIVALENT) value of a whole.
The students were also able to mathematically find any equivalent to a fraction by multiplication. The students were taught multiplying the numerator and denominator by the same number gave them infinite amounts of equivalent fractions.
