Weekly Update

Grandparent's & Special Person's Day
What a great time students had sharing the morning with their grandparents and other special guests on Thursday!  Our guests spent time doing some morning math work, listening to students read aloud favorite picture books in the library, eating breakfast in the LGI, and listening to students read aloud their country reports.  Back in the classroom, students interviewed their guests to learn more about what life was like when they were in third grade.  Students loved learning more about their guests and realized how much times have changed.  Check out some great photos from our special day below.

Poetry Workshop
We are continuing to read and write poetry in both reading and writing workshops.  Students began the week by studying the mood of different poems and then trying to bring to life their own moods and emotions to the poems they wrote in their writer's notebooks.  Students also learned about personification.  Sometimes poets will give human qualities to objects that make them seem like they are alive.  We also learned how poets often use similes to compare two things (ex: My hands were as cold as ice).  Often students' poetry can sound more like stories, so we'll continue to help students rewrite their poems to include short, more rhythmic phrases and line breaks.

Math:
We will wrap up Unit 5 this week.  It has been a very tricky unit.  The whole unit has focused on learning how to solve word problems, word problems, and more word problems!  We are really impressed at the thinking our students have done to solve so many tricky problems, including problems with extra information, hidden information, unknown variables, problems with rounding and reasonable answers, and of course two-step problems! 

All-Star of the Week: Brooke G.

Brooke was our amazing all-star last week.  She brought in three wooden painted eggs, her sketch book and a jewelry box her mom had made for her with jewels inside for her sharing sack.  Brooke shared photographs of her family but the class favorite was the picture of her as a baby with a pacifier in her mouth and sunglasses on! She had style from day 1!!!!! She also read her favorite book In the Nest and read a very nice letter from her mom.  We enjoyed learning more about Brooke this week!

Poetry Workshop (Reading and Writing Time):

The students have started poetry workshop.  In poetry workshop, students have been engaged in both writing poetry and reading poetry.  In the photos below, you'll see the students working on a number of things...
* Finding rhyming words within a poem
*Reading poems and snapping when you read a set of rhyming words
* Finding poems that are about ordinary things
*Generating lists of ordinary things to write a poem about
* Finding phrases poets use that show sensory images (sense of sight, taste, smell, touch and sound)
* Using the 5 senses to write poems about an ordinary things in our composition notebooks
*Recognizing repetition in mentor poems
* Experimenting with line breaks when writing poems

Rhyming Words in Poems:

Marc D finding rhyming words in our poetry workshop mini-lesson.

Brooke and Maia

Audrey and Maya

Jordan and Ben

Ryan and Jason

Fatima and Sarah

Sean and Yousif

Marc and Adrien

Alice and Madison

Samantha and AJ

Mackenzie and Katelynn

Levi and Mark

David and Dimitri

Hannah and Eden

Here you see Jason at independent writing time recording rhyming pairs found in his poetry folder on a sticky note.

IDW Task: finding rhyming words in our poetry books.

Katelynn

Ben

Adrien 

Audrey

David

Finding Poems that are about Ordinary Things:

Mark and Levi

Katelynn

Marc D

Dimitri

A collection of what the students found at their independent writing-task time

Discovering the Sensory Images inPoems

Alice

Levi

Mackenzie

Adrien

Using the 5-Senses to Generate Ideas for an Ordinary Thing:

A Fun Break: Reader's Theater to Practice our Fluency and Expression:

Math:

Solving Comparison Word Problems:

Madison and Fatima drawing base-ten block representations of numbers as a strategy for comparing 4-digit numbers.

Place value drawings of 4-digit numbers.

Students stacking numbers and circling each place as a strategy to compare numbers.

Students used the strategy Claim-Evidence-Reasoning to prove why the answer to the above story problem was wrong.  They had to use evidence and reasoning to prove their thinking.

Spiral Multiplication:

Each morning, students played the math game Spiral Multiplication to work on their multiplication skills and help practice before the bi-weekly math facts quizzes.  They love this game and it's an easy one to set up and play at home.  All you need is a deck of cards and dice! 

Social Studies: Welcome to the Southwest Region:

Students started off their introduction to the Southwest Region by arranging the classroom into a Big Rig.  In order to travel to the Southwest, they needed to depart from the Southwest Trucking Terminal.  Students traveled to the following places this week...

• Monument Valley
  Phoenix, Arizona
The Hoover Dam
The Grand Canyon
Carlsbad Caverns
Austin, Texas

Eden-Grace is writing down the main idea/important facts from the stops listed above in her region binder.  

Mark Y glued his souvenirs to his Southwest Scrapbook page and is labeling each stop along the way.