We finished up our fiction unit in Readers Workshop in April. The students worked in Book Clubs discussing main characters in a series. They discussed character traits, how a character responds to problems in the story, and inferred how characters felt throughout the books. The students took leadership roles during book discussions by asking questions, giving summaries, and digging deeper into books to strengthen their comprehension skills. They also collected new vocabulary words and used the context of the story to figure out the meaning of new words. We have moved onto another informational unit. We hunt for text features, look for words and phrases that are repeated, note topic sentences and important details to support it, and teach each other new facts learned.
The students are doing a great job creating persuasive writing pieces. We have read books such as , The Widow's Broom, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, The Day the Crayons Quit, and A Fine, Fine School. After reading, the students write an opinion piece answering a posed question and use examples from the texts to support their thinking. They are great young authors!!
We just finished up measurement and time units in math. They measured and compared objects in inches, centimeters, and yards. We collected measurement data and plotted it in line plots. We are telling time to five minutes and getting a better understanding of the concept of time. We have just started our 8th unit which is adding and subtracting within 1,000 using strategies such as expanded form, partial sums, base ten blocks, and open number lines.
Science has been very hands on and exciting. They completed the unit on Matter and we have started our plant unit. The students learned how to create a scientific drawing of a flower and labeled all of its parts, they dissected flowers, and most recently we planted zinnias and radishes. Each student chose an experiment involving light or water. Some students are watering their plant 2 x a week with 30 ml of water, some are watering their plant 5 days a week with 20 ml of water, while others are using natural light in our classroom (with water too of course), others are using natural light in the library and some are using artificial light.
We had a very fun field trip to Bushy Hill last week. Thank you to all those who were able to join our trip as chaperones. Below are some photos from our fun day!
Stay tuned for information regarding our end of year party! :0 )
See you all soon!