Hello HA Families!
English/Language Arts
We kicked off our connection unit by reading an amazing picture book called The Graphic Alphabet. We started by looking at the cover of the letter A with crumbling rocks falling down. They needed to make a connection to the letter A and the beginning sound of the word. A = Avalanche. A few picked this up right away and by the end everyone was excited when they were able to make the connection. Next, we practiced finding connections around the classroom to help them with their homework.
Math
This week we began talking about the attributes of 2D shapes. Students used their white boards to list the characteristics of triangles, hexagons, pentagons, and quadrilaterals. We talked about how many sides, vertices, angles, etc. that each shape has. We even did some stretches on the floor to learn about the different angles. Ask them to demonstrate an obtuse, right, and acute angle for you. They had a lot of fun doing these! We will continue our shape learning next week.
English/Language Arts
Math
Second grade math kiddos were shown two groups of shapes and asked which group had only triangles. Easy enough for them, right? However, the why and support behind it is our goal. We started by listing ideas of what makes a triangle on our white boards. What are the different attributes of triangles? How can triangles be different from each other? We also talked about vertices and angles. We even did some fun exercises to demonstrate acute, obtuse, and right angles. The kids really had fun doing these and I think it's a good way to help them remember the angles.
After brainstorming our ideas about triangles, we used a Think Frame to organize our thoughts and ensure we were answering ALL parts of the question. We finished by transferring our thoughts into the paragraph-like format where we could fill in the blanks. It was a lot more writing than they are used to in math, but they did a fantastic job!!
English/Language Arts
We started by brainstorming, what is change? How do you know when something has changed? Together they came up with over 30 ideas! The goal was at least 20 and they far surpassed it. After they completed listing their ideas, I had them group them into categories of similar change. There is no right or wrong for this. They just needed to be able to explain their reasoning. I was very impressed by their creative thoughts!
Math
We jumped right in with solving a similar problems to their "pancake" question on the pre-assessment. We looked at writing the word "Sarah" several times over. Algebra teaches them to look at the problem a completely different way. I had a few who were moving in the right direction on the pre-assessment, but were off slightly on their answer. Together we answered several questions about writing the word "Sarah" so many times and finding what was the 137th letter? We found that knowing how many letters are in the word is important. Sarah is a five letter word, so counting by "5's" to get to "135" is where we started. Then we counted up two more to get to A. We are still working on perfecting this method! It's especially harder for them when the name is not 5 or 10 letters long. They are all hard workers and will master it soon!
English/Language Arts
Third and fourth grade did the same activity this past week as we started our units on change! We started by brainstorming, what is change? How do you know when something has changed? Together they came up with over 30 ideas! The goal was at least 20 and they far surpassed it. After they completed listing their ideas, I had the students group them into categories of similar change. There is no right or wrong for this. They just needed to be able to explain their reasoning. I was very impressed by their creative thoughts!Math
