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.

Blizzard Blogging about Biomes, "Blowing" Through Multiplication, Braille, Text Structures, Expository Experts, and Halfway Day

It's hard to believe we've already been in school 3 weeks in 2015! We sure have been busy!

Several students who had eagerly participated in my Winter Break Reading Challenge enjoyed an after school hot cocoa party. Reading really is delicious!

Our current science unit focuses on the various biomes found around the world. Fittingly, we started with the tundra and learned about the climate, numerous animals who call the tundra home, and the low-lying cushion plants that can be found there. Next, we read about the rainforest, its four layers, and why it has been coined "Earth's largest pharmacy."

We would be remiss if we let January come and go without a study of a very influential man in America's history. Biographies, passages, paired texts, and timelines confirmed existing knowledge about Martin Luther King and the legacy of this famous civil rights leader. Students were captivated as they watched King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

We have been fortunate enough to bring to life multiplication flip books perfectly aligned with common core standards. These templates were created by a talented teacher and blogger Blair Turner. 

Topic 6 has concluded with problem solving using multiplication, arrays, skip counting, and even algebra. We used organized lists to solve for all possible combinations in real life situations.

We've been blowing through our multiplication timed quizzes. We earn bubble gum to enjoy during math for every timed quiz that earns a score of 90 or above. 

Topic 6 concluded with practice multiplying 3 factors, using multiplication to solve for combinations, and Our long term math project has been assigned and an informational letter with a rubric has been sent home. Students will demonstrate their understanding of fact families by representing a colorful and creative array using stickers, illustration, print-outs, shapes, or designs. A multiplication and division fact family should accompany the array. The second part of the project requires students to create a mathematical table representing the amount of food needed to serve breakfast to their families. Individual serving sizes are included on the project letter. Projects are due March 11.

In honor of January being National Braille Month, two new word work activities debuted this week-- Braille and American Sign Language. Students have been eager to practice spelling their words using these two alternate means of communication.

As we delve deeper into informational texts, we have studied the text structure of books and articles to help us better understand the author's purpose for writing. Often writers will present facts in one of these formats--descriptive compare and contrast, cause and effect, problem and solution, or sequential.

QR Critters offer students reader response questions to use during Reader's Workshop along with their independent reading book--fiction or informational. Students scan the QR codes to read the question. Students answer questions pertaining to characters, setting, plot, resolution, author's purpose, genre, predictions, and factual information--just to name a few.

In Writer's Workshop, students have begun brainstorming, drafting, and researching topics and main ideas for their first expository piece. Topics range from presidents to sharks, basketball to soccer, and France to fish. Writers will incorporate text features in to their published pieces.

Writers have also enjoyed writing narratives inspired by photographs found in calendars like the one seen below.

We have extended our study of nouns to include abstract nouns such as freedom, patience, and knowledge and concrete nouns such as flag, basket, and book.

On Halfway Day students brainstormed and composed half of a story-- setting the scene and introducing the character and story problem. A writing partner had to complete the story resolving the story's problem.

The 100th Day is gradually approaching...

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!