Thursday, March 21

Snow? Really? We took our measurement assessment today in Math. I haven't graded them all but overall, scores were lower than I anticipated. This was a long, challenging test. I'm going to look them over, over break and see where any misconceptions are or if there is something that needs re-taught or more practice. We learned more about the puddlejumpers in Read Aloud and students worked on getting caught up with their reading and writing. Finally, we visited with our 1st grade buddies and made Easter Basket hats! How fun!

Wednesday, March 20

First day of spring?? In Math, we worked on a pretty tough review sheet for the measurement assessment tomorrow. Students will be expected to measure, convert between units in metric system and U.S. customary systems, find perimeter and area as well as estimate and visualize to choose appropriate units. They have learned these skills and will now show their secure understanding through application of these skills in more realistic situations. In Reader's Workshop, we continued our workboard work and in Writer's Workshop, students continued the writing process to publish their historical fiction pieces. In Social Studies we started looking at more recent immigrants to Ohio.

Tuesday, March 19

In Math today, we practiced area and perimeter. The students did a phenomenal job adding for perimeter and multiplying with area. However, they are struggling with labeling their answers. Perimeter should be labeled with just straight units (ft., cm, m, in., etc.) where area should be labeled with square units (sq. ft., sq. in., sq. cm, sq. m, etc.). Please help your child to remember this label. Wawaywo, the Rainmaker, received his spiral tattoo today in Puddlejumpers making him an official puddlejumper! This fantasy book is very fantastical and a little hard to follow but we are making ends meet and it has such rich description and vocabulary that we are getting a great model for our own writing. In Reader's Workshop, we continued our resumes on Ohio Inventors and worked on some math based off of a Guinness World Record of the most NFL games at all the NFL stadiums. We resumed revising, editing and publishing our historical fiction personal narratives. These need to be finished by Thursday. If not, they will need to be working on them over Spring Break. I have given them oodles of time and there is no reason to not be finished. Finally, in Social Studies, we wrote journals based off of pictures of immigrants in the 1800's arriving in the United States from the perspective of one of the immigrants in the picture.

Monday, March 18

In Math today, we practiced conversions with capacity and time. Tomorrow, we will be practicing Perimeter and Area and then review on Wednesday before our test THURSDAY over Measurement. We were only able to read one chapter in Puddlejumpers so not too much to add about Shawn's kidnapping. In Reader's Workshop, we read about Ohio Inventors and are creating their "resume's" which takes some clear inferencing which is tripping the kiddos up a bit. We also read and worked with  a TFK about pennies and how they may be going away because it costs more to make them than they are worth... hmmm... a world without pennies... We re-visited our historical fiction personal narratives in Writer's Workshop today. We focused mainly on revising and adding more detail to our stories. In Social Studies, we continued our focus on Immigration by reading and learning about the Amish and Appalachian cultures.

Friday, March 15

In Math today, we made a friend for our Gallon Man. Then we used him to make conversions with capacity. We have been practicing and practicing with conversions and they are getting pretty secure with the skill. Next week we will be practicing but also reviewing area and perimeter. We will end our week with a measurement assessment. In Read Aloud, baby Shawn or the Rainmaker--according to the Puddlejumpers, was kidnapped! I wonder what the connection is with the first chapter... In Reader's Workshop, we finished our workboard work. We read about Ohio Inventors, finished our Guinness Reading and Math papers and applied measurement with a story. I give workboard work to reinforce skills and I've found that the kiddos aren't putting forth the effort needed--they see it as busy work so I'm going to be holding them more accountable for this work so you may see some things coming home if not completed in class. We were able to see the first grade musical this afternoon which was so cute! Our buddies are in first grade as are a lot of siblings! We completed the day playing a few rounds of "What's the Word?", an app on my iPad that I showed the kiddos this week. I like this app because it is free and teaches them vocabulary and patterns and paying attention to detail.

Pi Day--Thursday, March 14

Whew! Today, in Math, we continued our work with conversions and application of measurement. Tomorrow, we'll work with capacity and Gallon Man! We read more about the Puddlejumpers during Read Aloud. It is starting off very good and they don't want me to quit reading! In Reader's Workshop, we began reading about Ohio Inventors and worked on reading about and applying measurement skills.  After that, we visited 2 Cities of Ember (Miss Cross and Mrs. Andrews) where they taught us a little about circuits and showed us what they have learned about electricity. Finally, we ended the day with the Charlie Brown video about Leukemia shown by Student Council to inform the kiddos what Pennies for Patients truly is about.

Wednesday, March 13

Today was a chaotic but fun day. We had our author visit with Mr. Charles R. Smith, Jr. and it was soo very cool! His presentation was amazing and very motivational and meaningful. He talked about his life and how he got started but also discussed that discipline, focus and control are necessary. Hmmm...I seem to say that a lot but it sounded much cooler coming from him! Anyway, other than our presentation from Mr. Smith, we also worked on converting using the metric system in Math, began our new fantasy book, Puddlejumpers and had Guidance with Mrs. Vidic where she discussed self-discipline with the kiddos. Thank you to Clare, Baylie and Kimmie for sharing their finished poetry with Mr. Smith! They put their nerves aside and delivered. (Thank you also to Carter and Natalie because we shared their poetry with him and he really enjoyed it even though you weren't there...hope you don't mind!)

Tuesday, March 12

It's a great week here at ADE! In Math, we learned about the Metric Staircase. This is an extremely challenging topic with converting between the units and they did an amazing job for our first day working on this and no worries because we will continue to work on conversions for this week and maybe next. In Read Aloud, we discussed the genre of Fantasy. Students looked for books within the genre for us to read next...we'll begin our new Fantasy book tomorrow. In Reader's Workshop, students continued working on their workboard work for this week--ask them about the gross, long nails! We finished up poetry or free wrote in Writer's Workshop and in Social Studies, learned about African American immigrants and what brought that cultural group to Ohio.

Monday, March 11

I hope you are staying dry on this very soggy, sleepy Monday. We started the day with Art and then in Math, reviewed measuring and measurement. We practiced making common conversions between US Customary system for length. Tomorrow, we are going to focus on the Metric System. After lunch, Mr. Whitt from COSI came and did some fun experiments teaching us about the different states of matter. We got to be "in a cloud" again and I got to have dragon breath! (Ask your kiddo...) In Reader's Workshop, we worked with a Guinness World Record for the longest nails and read in the Time For Kids about kids having too much stuff--I agree! We shared our poetry and finished Heartbeat to round out the day,

TGIFriday, March 8

We took our Data Analysis assessment today in Math. It went pretty well. If students missed parts of questions, it was because they forgot labels or a title or didn't read the questions carefully, not because they didn't understand the graph, for the most part. In Read Aloud, Annie's little brother was born and Max raced with the 'herd' but lost. We finished up our workboard work from yesterday in Reader's Workshop and put any final touches on our poetry in Writer's Workshop. Our day ended with an assembly to kick off the Spring flower sale.

Thursday, March 7

In Math today, we worked backwards with data. I gave them some landmark statistics and they had to create possible data points that fit the statistics. We also practiced reading graphs and charts. Tomorrow will be our assessment over this unit. We learned more about Grandpa's memory loss today in Heartbeat--he has Alzheimer's and his granddaughter, Annie, is trying to understand and cope with this. In Reader's Workshop, we worked on some spelling, word problems and a reading passage about Snow Elephants. We are finishing our poetry in Writer's Workshop and talked about immigrtation in the 1800s. We discussed the who, where and why of immigration during this time. We will be looking at immigration then and now over the next couple of weeks.

Tuesday, March 5

In Math, we worked really hard looking at graphs, tables, charts, landmarks and line plots. I explained to them that they do an awesome job going from point A to point Z when it comes to graphing and data analysis. However, they have trouble going from Z to A or even from S to Z. We also tried to label or title line plots to show that we are truly looking at the data. We also got the laptops out and worked with the website ixl.com to practice answering questions about graphs and line plots and such. We read more about Max and Annie during Read Aloud in Heartbeat. Sharon Creech does an amazing job connecting the readers to the characters all while doing this through poetry. In Reader's Workshop, we continued to catch up from last week...unfortunately/fortunately, the kiddos have been so into reading and writing poetry that they got a little behind in their workboard work. They may have brought some home to help get caught up. Then, we completed our day in the computer lab putting our poetry to music using Garage Band. These are sooo cool and we are excited to share them with Charles Smith, Jr. when he visits next week. All students will be getting a CD compilation of our class poetry (but not too soon...Mrs. Parker-Jones has to burn all the CDs for all the students in 4th grade...be patient).

Monday, March 4

We were pretty productive today... In Math, we continued our work with Data Analysis and from their work, I gave a pop-quiz/mini-assessment to see what we still needed to work on. We were about 50-50 for our understanding with answering previous OAA questions--all multiple choice. I think they do very well with gathering, reporting and interpreting the landmarks of data. However, they do not show secure understanding when they have to APPLY their understanding--so what all this means. The rest of the week, we will practice working backwards, understanding the process and they why of each step in data collection and analysis and will take an assessment on Friday to show this secure thinking. The best way to "practice" for this would be to show real graphs and charts (like in the newspaper or online) and ask them questions about what they mean or show or about how the author/source collected the information. In Read Aloud, we had a birthday treat and discussed their behavior from last week with the sub. Overall, I think they were ok-behaved, they just had an issue during the Fire Drill and left the room messy after being asked to clean it up. Mr. Potato Head is not very happy that he lost an arm and his nose... In Reader's Workshop, they worked on catching up from last week with homophones, a reading passage, reading bar and line graphs and playing Boggle. We are also writing a class book inspired by a picture book of poetry we read, There's a Zoo in Room 22, called We Need a Pen in Room 110. They are writing alliterative poetry comparing themselves to an animal, which they worked on as well. We recorded our poem with Mrs. Parker-Jones to be used with Garage Band tomorrow and we published and illustrated this poem during Writer's Workshop. For Science, we concluded our sort of physical properties of matter by actually sorting the objects back out by their materials.
A lot of stuff completed and worked on today, huh?!