Research, Place Value, Fun Fair

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library
Community Reads - March 31

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Research Project:

The research groups are working so hard! This week, all groups worked on revision and clarifying information. They looked at their rough drafts through an editor's eye to see if information made sense and was easy to understand. I am now in the process of meeting with each group to work on editing and starting the final product. 

Math:

We started our place value unit last week. In this unit, the students discover how to break apart 2 digit numbers, compare 2 digit numbers, and add and subtract 2 digit numbers. We have a variety of math tools for this unit: tens frames, base ten blocks, and hide zero cards.

We also started learning how to tell time to the hour and half hour. More on that next week!

Fun Fair:

Were you able to go to the fun fair? Mrs. Thompson and I had so much fun at the limbo game! The Fun Fair is such a great event that brings everyone together for an evening of fun and laughter!

Recess:

The crazy weather on Friday kept us inside for recess. A group of students and I took out the dominoes and had so much fun building with dominoes and watching them fall! We all talked about videos we have seen online of big domino projects. We aren't there yet, but we had fun trying! I have a slo-mo video that I took, but I can't get it to load right now... I will try to update later. ;-) 

What a week!

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library
March 22 - Report Cards

March 24 - Fun Fair 4:30-6:30

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Due to the snowstorm, report cards are going home on Wednesday, March 22.

Jump Rope for  Heart:

What a week! We started the  week with Jump Rope for Heart. It was a fun 50 minutes of jump roping and activity. We all had a good workout! 

Research Project:

Each of the research groups were able to list 3 choices for an animal to research. I went through all the choices, looked at our resources, and on Monday I revealed which animal each group was doing. The researchers got right to work, finding resources in the room and recording information in their fact finding notebooks. Mr. Gile found a bunch of books in the library for us to use. As a class, we created a list of "Must Haves," what has to be included in their work. 

Now, the students are working hard on their rough draft of the project. I have observed students using what we learned about giving and receiving feedback, thinking about how to use features of nonfiction to teach others about their topic, and working together with their research group to make sure everyone gets a voice and is involved. Super job researchers!

Reading with others and the start of a new unit!

Important Dates:

Tuesdays: library

March 15 - early release

March 17 - Report Cards

March 24 - Fun Fair 4:30-6:30

Parent/Teacher Conference - April 13 and 14

Before vacation we shared our nonfiction books with Mr. Schlatter's second grade and Miss Bushey's kindergarten. Our class had to read like experts and prepare books with questions and places to stop and think. The students did a great job!

 

This past week we kicked off our Project Based Learning unit (PBL). I'll be sharing more about this in next week's post. But this past week, we started off by talking about giving and receiving feedback. We watched this video.  Then, we tried it ourselves. The students worked really hard to give and receive feedback on how to make their butterfly drawings more realistic. I impressed with the quality of feedback the students gave each other.