Week 2

Hello All, we had a FULL week!  This post started with 63 pictures!!!!  Looking back, I can see all the good learning we are doing.  We introduced many new routines this week.  The kids are just soaking everything up.

On Monday, we introduced Math Stations.  On Mondays and Fridays, the entire class stays with me instead of switching for Math Seminar.  This allows me to work with my homeroom students on general math concepts, like time, money, place value, fact practice, etc.

Typically, half the class works with me doing a small group activity, while the other half work independently in stations.  Then we switch groups.  Here are some Math Stations in action.

Also, this week, we talked about becoming Word Nerds!  We want to learn new words and use them when we are talking with others.  Increasing our vocabulary helps us when we are reading and writing as well!  Each week, we learn 3-5 target words.  This week it was COMMUNITY, CURIOUS, and PERSEVERE.  We learn what the words means, synonyms and antonyms for each word.  We will work with these words for 2 weeks.

To practice our words, we played SCRAMBLE.  Each word was on an index card.  Kids had to find the "Castle" that each word belonged in.  Synonyms and Antonyms live in a CASTLE with our main word.  When I said "Scramble," kids threw the cards down and had to find a new one.  Then we played again.

In Grammar, we are learning/reviewing that a COMPLETE sentence has 2 parts....a naming part (subject) and a telling part (predicate).  For those students who understand this concept and can write complete sentences most of the time,  we are talking about putting sentences together to make COMPLETE paragraphs!

Later in the week, we reviewed complete sentences, then sorted groups of words into complete sentences vs. incomplete sentences.

We also began a reading The Three Questions by Jon Muth.

In the book, a young boy asks 3 questions to try to learn how to be a good person.  We worked in cooperative groups to make posters about what a good person does, what a good person feels and what a good person thinks.

On Tuesday, we discussed what made a "Just Right" book during Reader's Workshop.   We created this anchor chart together, then looked through our own book boxes to make sure we had Just Right books.  We then shared with a partner what we found.

 To prepare for an art project later in the week, we painted HUGE pieces of paper.  This allowed us to talk about procedures for art in our classroom.  How we get materials out, how we use them, and most importantly.....how we CLEAN up!

Wondering about that painted paper?  We used it to build the setting of the book The Three Questions.  

On Friday, we had our first Math in Real Life project.  This is an open ended math problem solving task.  There is no correct answer, but kids have to use math to solve a read world math problem.  Today's challenge was to budget for a trip to an amusement park.  Students worked with a partner to come up with a plan for 2 adults and 2 kids to go to an amusement park for 2 days, and eat 2 meals each day.  The kids used a price list to determine their plan.  I was looking for students to work together to solve the problem, and to HEAR them using math language and thinking in their discussions.  I was rewarded with wonderful conversations by each group.

Many of the groups, used math tools to help them with the addition.

If you made it to the end of this long post.....then THANK YOU!  Looking back on it, we did a TON this week.  It felt very good to dive into these things, and the kids were engaged and very excited to do the work!