Air Holiday, Multiplication, Publishing, and Biting in to the Common Core

We closed out 2014 flying aboard Air Holiday and learning about the various holiday traditions around the world. From Italy to Israel, Canada to Australia, students learned about the countries' traditions, gift bringer, decorations, and foods customarily prepared. Passports, photographs, mini books, and in-flight readings provided passengers with information about these diverse traditions. 

 

We were lucky enough to be the first class to venture to Creative Corner-- a new "art studio" at Memorial Park. Once there, students drafted murals on easels to represent similarities and differences between two self-selected countries that had been studied.

We were fortunate enough to enjoy two author visits to Memorial Park in the past few weeks. We loved listening to Kathleen Ready Dayan read her popular book called Cape Cod Bear Goes to Boston. We were surprised to learn how long it took her to revise this book! You can click here to learn more about Dayan and her published books.

Students have been eager to come full circle in the writing process on their personal narratives. Entertaining beginnings, elaborative detail, dialogue, and extended endings make these personal narratives shine. As students revise and then edit their work, they refer to the acronyms ARMS and COPS. See below for what the acronyms represent.

As we dive into more informational texts, we are working on a popular Common Core strategy known as Close Reading that requires us to read text multiple times, each with a unique purpose. We study the author's word choice, the structure of the text, and summarize it for the main idea. Recording our thinking in the margin is a key strategy when performing a Close Read.

In addition, we have used a few of Norman Rockwell's most famous paintings to discuss main idea and appropriate titles for his pieces. What would you name the painting below?

In math we are focusing on multiplication facts and word problems that require multiple steps. Students have enjoyed studying and practicing their Zero Property, Identity Property, 2s, 5s, 9s, and 10s through fun and interactive games on multiplication.com.

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In addition, students are gaining rich experience with problem solving through a program used throughout the district called Exemplars. Word problems of varying difficulty require students to transfer knowledge and apply strategies to solve multi-step problems using rounding, place value, and basic operations. I have already seen great improvement in their problem solving over the past few weeks.

January's trait of the month is perseverance. Both in and out of the classroom students are reminded to try their best, take risks, and not give up when facing challenges. This rings especially true in math. Students often seek immediate assistance when they are faced with a word problem in their math assignments. I encourage them to reread, search for keywords, use pictures or tables, and stick with it. :)

In January, we return to multiplication learning our 3s, 4s, 6s, 7s, and 8s using some rhymes and songs to help us. We will continue our focus on informational texts using the Close Reading strategy. In writing, we will continue to publish our personal narratives, and begin our expository writing. We'll talk about goals and resolutions and dive right back in!

Wax Museum, Math Patterns, an Author Visit and the Share Chair

We stepped back in time in November and welcomed many famous Massachusetts figures to Room 16.

Paul Revere, Abigail Adams, Robert Goddard and Benjamin Franklin shared with us a few of their famous accomplishments. 

 

 

In Social Studies, students read about the daily life of a Pilgrim boy named Samuel Eaton. A busy day spent fetchinig water, collecting firewood, helping with the meals, and joining his father in the rye harvest left little time for play!

Below, Billy and Isabella, Derek and Ryan C. partner read Samuel Eaton's Day.  

 

As we learn our 2s, 5s, 9s, and 10s multiplication facts, we used a hundreds chart to notice patterns. All multiples of 2 are even and have a 0, 2, 4, 6, or 8 in the ones place. Multiples of 5 have a 0 or a 5 in the ones place and we noticed the tens digit increases while the ones digit decreases in multiples of 9. Be sure to study multiplication facts each night! :)

 

Two weeks ago, author and illustrator Kate Sullivan visited Memorial Park and read her fictional story On Linden Square. She talked to us about the importance of characters in stories and suggested ways to describe them that would engage and interest the reader. She inspired us to draw and write character descriptions about people in our neighborhood using physical traits as well as observations we have made about them. What a treat it was to have her read our writing!

In Writer's Workshop, students wrote persuasive pieces from the point of view of alliterative turkeys. Writers had to convince readers to NOT cook them on Thanksgiving. In addition to giving three reasons why they should not be eaten, writers added supporting details and an alternative solution.

Rosie shares her persuasive piece with a few of Miss O'Day's buddy readers. 

With personal narratives edited and revised, writers celebrated their accomplishments in the Share Chair. We offered compliments, questions, and suggestions to these budding writers.

Next week, we dig deeper to find the main idea of stories and passages and begin a unit on informational texts. Topic 6 in math introduces us to the 3, 4, and 6 multiplication tables!

Words Their Way, Jana Dillon Visits, a Subtraction Shortcut, and Pen Pal Letters

This week students were introduced to a new spelling program called Words Their Way. A pretest helped determined each student's developmental spelling level. In class and at home, practice sorting and writing the words will help students internalize the spelling patterns.

A big focus in Topic 3 has been regrouping. It is essential that students check their calculations for careless errors when adding and subtracting. Further, keywords like in all, total, and how many more can become useful tools when determining the appropriate operation to execute.

Check out the Math page on the blog for a peek at a shortcut for subtracting across zeroes. The shortcut has mathematicians interpret 705, for example, as 70 tens and 5 ones, simplifying the regrouping process by one step. See our anchor chart below for three examples.

Thanks to the generosity of the Rockland Education Foundation, we were honored to host children's book author and illustrator Jana Dillon to Memorial Park on Tuesday. The third and fourth graders enjoyed a Writer's Workshop presentation that focused on a creative writing story with a superhero as the main character.

Another exciting debut this week was the arrival of our first batch of pen pal letters! Throughout the year we will be corresponding with third graders in Pennsylvania. We used a two- column note organizer to brainstorm our thoughts and ideas. Ask your child what he learned about his pen pal!

Our Social Studies Family Learning Project is due November 8. In class, student historians chose a famous Massachusetts figure to research. Students will make brief presentations dressed as their famous figure while sharing important facts about the person using five notecards. Details can be found on the project letter sent home Thursday as well as by clicking on the Social Studies page of the blog.

Multiplication is coming up next, but students should continue to practice their basic addition and subtraction facts often! As students will soon learn, multiplication is a form of repeated addition!