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.

Once Upon a Time.... We Traveled Back in Time

Last month we were fortunate enough to receive a generous donation of 30 pizza boxes from Rockland's Themis Pizza. These boxes were integral to our pizza box fraction project. Students "cooked up" unique pizzas and determined the fractions that could be attributed to the toppings they chose. 

                   

Students and teachers also had the chance to visit the Arts Festival at the high school last month. Rockland sure has talent!

 

 

Cinderella and Pilgrims--what a combination!

Our most recent literacy units have explored comparing and contrasting as well as synthesizing new information.

Our mentor texts for comparing and contrasting have been numerous versions of the traditional fairy tale of Cinderella. These read alouds have even inspired some writers to create their own unique versions--Sophia and the Rich Boy and The Beautiful Girl are merely a few examples.

 

 

Next we will compare and contrast the Pilgrims with the Puritans.

May has been jam packed with oodles of math as we counted down the days to the math MCAS test. The balloon countdown brought us many exciting activities that included lunch in the outdoor classroom, extra recess, and mouthwatering math activities like the pizza box project mentioned above.

 

Kids loved arriving to school on testing day to love notes from parents and relatives.

 

We worked with perimeter, area, and data. Several parents came to join us for Math Academy a few afternoons.

 

 

We've eagerly graphed guesses for our Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday baby pictures. This math activity has garnered rich math discussion from appropriate titles, labels, scales, and observations.

 

Students have also continued their work on their poetry anthologies. Writers tried matzah during the Jewish holiday of Passover and composed cinquain poems describing this festive treat.

After reading excerpts from Vulture Poems and Animals Nobody Loves, poets drafted love poems to animals perceived as pests to many.

We're looking forward to sharing our published pieces with parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings at this Friday's Poetry Picnic and Color Party.

Students were recently introduced to their Google Docs accounts, and they are HOOKED! Our digital natives have typed published poems, creative writing stories, friendly letters, and even used the program to type spelling assignments such as Type It! and friendly letters. Log in information has been sent home on the back side of the last two issues of Mack's Marinade.

 

 

Just this week we were introduced to Maximo from GoNoodle. The kids have been enjoying body breaks periodically throughout the day. It's calming and helps us refocus in between activities.