Friday, November 18, 2016

Our Past Two Weeks in Review - Happy Thanksgiving!

It has been a very, very busy two weeks!

We wrapped up our first Interactive Read Aloud (IRA), Mr. Popper's Penguins, with our Black and White Day Celebration, and a visit from Mr. Whitmore!  We enjoyed creating Antarctic Art, playing Win, Lose or Draw with vocabulary and characters from the book, and penguin art.  We also wrapped up our book with a comprehension/vocabulary check.  Students brought home their Interactive Read Aloud Journals this week to share their learning from this IRA. If you didn't see this journal, please check in with your child, and he/she can bring it home again to share with you.

Thank you, Mr. Whitmore!


Line Plot of our Black and White Snacks







Win, Lose or Draw

Antarctic Art!





Book Talks




Learning about New Words



We have also finished publishing our personal narratives.  We are working on fine tuning our sentence writing this week, and will begin our fiction stories after Thanksgiving Break.






We began our unit about multiplication strategies during math.  These strategies are new to students, and often new for parents as well.  Check our blog regularly for quick videos to support your child with math homework.  You may find videos in the blog or in our twitter feed to the right.  Become a twitter follower (@mertenladybugs) and you will receive automatic updates when these are tweeted. Over the next few weeks, we will learn a variety of strategies to solve multiplication problems.  Students will learn different strategies, and then make a choice about what works best for them.  Knowing a variety of strategies allows students to (1)have a way to double check work, (2)demonstrate clear understanding multiplication and the value of the numbers, (3) see quickly if an answer doesn't make sense.







Student Comfort Level BEFORE Thursday's Math Lesson


Student Comfort Level AFTER Thursday's Math Lesson

We continue to learn about the weather in science and Mexico in social studies.

Thanksgiving speeches will take place on Tuesday morning.  Students have been reminded to continue to practice their speech, using the rubric to focus on public speaking.  At this time, students should have the speech written, and should be practicing "giving the speech".  Starting off at home makes this a more comfortable activity for the children.  Some suggestions for practicing are to present:

  • in front of stuffed animals
  • in front of a pet/pets
  • for a friend/sibling
  • to parents
  • over Facetime/Skype with a family member

Way to Go!


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