A Snow Day Update and Valentine Box Inspiration

Snowed in and so much to do!

 
In addition to printing out our Texan pen pal letters, and prepping Valentine goodies, I want to take a few minutes to update you on the fabulous learning going on in Room 16.

We recently launched our exploration of cursive with a weekly Cursive Cadet to help us sky write, trace, and practice our newest letter of the week. Kudos to those cadets!

We're diving into fractions- equal parts of a whole or a set. We also explored a few strategies for finding the fractional part of a set using division.

Last week we used a number line to record mixed numbers.




After making Groundhog Day predictions, we studied facts about Punxsutawney Phil, his burrow called Gobbler's Knob, and the famous legend behind this famous friend. We were even fortunate enough to watch the early morning footage of Phil's prediction we'll have an early spring.

A few more expository pieces have been published and are now on display outside our classroom. I have since learned a great deal about the numerous types of dinosaurs, how bears hibernate, the role of football coaches, and the necessary items dog owners should have. 

Last week used Tagxedo in the computer lab to create Valentine-inspired word clouds. Check out this free website for endless fun.

In the spirit of Valentine's Day, we are taking part in a cross-country Valentine exchange. We have decorated and customized nearly two dozen valentines to send to classrooms as far away as Alaska, California, and Arizona. Our valentines were decorated to represent our town and state. Bulldogs represented our schools' mascot while Boston-themed stickers highlighted a few of our capital city's famous landmarks such as Fenway Park and Breed's Hill. The tabby cat was included to show our state cat, while marine animals represented our renowned New England Aquarium. 

 The first Valentine to arrive to Memorial Park came from Wallington, NJ-- a town in the shape of a heart measuring only one square mile!

Snowed in and looking for a fun activity? Grab an empty cereal box or tissue box and decorate it to become your valentine box. Here are a few links to offer you some inspiration as you decorate. 

Visit Crafty Morning for some colorful and creative ideas.

 Ucreate also has some unique valentine mailboxes here.

Happy shoveling and happy crafting!

Information Text, the 100th Day, Pen Pal Letters, a Valentine Exchange, Division, and Google Docs

February may have been snowy and short, but we sure stayed busy!

We continue to dive in to informational texts, use text evidence to support our thinking, and become familiar with the format of passages and questions on the upcoming PARCC test. We have been getting experience with constructed response using excerpts and references in the text.

Our 100th Day was jam-packed. Many kids surely dressed the part! We wrote about life as a 100 year old person, brainstormed enjoyed a 100 calorie snack, and enjoyed puzzles using a hundreds chart.

  

We've also continued collecting and analyzing data through our Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday spotlights. After collecting and totaling students' guesses, we plot the data on a bar graph after determining an appropriate scale. Finally, we draw conclusions and analyze our findings.

Students were eager to respond to their Floridian pen pals. Along with individual letters, students received maps and facts about the Sunshine State. Writers drafted two column notes as they organized their reply. Some shared about how we celebrated the 100th Day, our Valentine celebration, and the heavy snow we had received. 

 

We were fortunate enough to take part in a nationwide Valentine Exchange with 21 other elementary classrooms from Hawaii to Arizona, Oklahoma, Florida, Pennsylvania, and New York to name a few.

  
Topic 7 has introduced us to division! We are finding that multiplication and division are opposite operations and our multiplication facts can help us as we solve division problems.

As we delve deeper into expository writing, we have begun to frame our piece using the expository pillar. Three body paragraphs will focus on three main ideas pertaining to the writer's topic. Some topics include hockey, gymnastics, sharks, Abraham Lincoln, artists' tools, and rocks and minerals. We have also worked together to reconstruct 4 expository pieces using the introduction, main idea headers, and concluding paragraphs as guides on the topics of Abraham Lincoln, the blue whale, Halloween, and types of dogs.

 

Students have become avid users of their Google Docs accounts as they compose friendly letters, practice spelling words, and publish final drafts. 

And don't forget, students' long term math project is due Wednesday, March 11. I am looking forward to students sharing their math breakfast table, colorful and creative array, and fact family.