Week 5

This week, we discussed what grown up readers do when they read a book.  One thing that good readers do is "THEY ASK QUESTIONS WHEN THEY READ."   First we made the chart below to think about WHY someone would ask questions when they were reading.  We talked about sometimes the answers to our questions are found in the book, and some questions we find the answers to in our brains after we have finished reading.  

We read the first part of the book The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg, and then we came up with questions that we had about the story (blue sticky notes).  As we read the second half of the book, we discovered some of our answers.   By focusing on questions while we were reading, it helped us think and understand the book much better.

In writing, we have started writing "Journey" stories, where we travel from one place to another.  It could be a long or a short journey.  We started out by drawing a map of a journey.   This was our brainstorm to get us ready to work on our rough draft.  More pictures about that next week.

This week, we started learning about Portland and its history.  We watched/discussed a video about the Missoula Floods and how that event really shaped our landscape.  We will also talk about the volcano activity that gave us many of our local landforms.  We recorded what we felt were the most important facts of what we learned so far.

Then we worked in pairs to read about native trees to our area.  We made a tree study of the r main ones.....Western Red Cedar, Big Leaf Maple, Douglas Fir, and the Western Hemlock.

In Math, we added the Chromebooks to our Math Rotations.  Here the students are working on their math fact using the XTRAMATH.org program.  This is great to do at home.

And finally, we took our moon background that we made last week, and created spooky fall pictures using black paper.  We talked about shadows and silhouettes.  The kids got very creative.  They will be on display in the hallway next week.

 Enjoy your weekend!