Friday, September 29, 2023

Another week is coming to an end, and these students haven't slowed down one bit. The learning that is being achieved in this classroom can be seen in the students' books and journals, and in how the walls are being filled up with anchor charts, student work and student goals.
This week in math, the students have continued learning about prime and composite numbers, and have been creating quick sketches to represent the arrays that they have been creating with tiles. On those sketches, the students have represented the factors and products of the equations. The students have also collaborated with partners through Work Places to play "Cover Up" and "Arrays to 100".
During our Literacy block, the students have been working on the i-Ready assessments for reading, and learning about Major and Minor Characters, Protagonist and Antagonist. Students have also learned about how character traits can be inferred from the dialogues, feelings, thoughts and actions of the characters. During independent reading, students have been practicing their words of the week if their choice was "Word Work", playing Pop with a partner to practice this week and last week's vocabulary, using those words in sentences to add to our Graffiti Wall, Reading to Someone and practicing check for understanding, Reading to Self and finding the protagonist and antagonist of their stories, Working on adding more ideas for their personal writing, or listening to some assigned articles on the Readworks platform.
This week we have added one more mindfulness practice to our thinking journal, the one called "heartfulness", where we think kind thoughts towards others, and they have been writing about moments or objects that they treasure, and places they are thankful for.
During science, the students have continued working and investigating using the eye models they created, and learning about how nocturnal animals can see in the dark.
We have also launched the Writing Workshop with lessons generating ideas for personal writing, zooming in just one moment, and making a plan for the first draft.
Have a fantastic weekend!