Did You Know…? The ‘wiki’ in Wikipedia is Hawaiian for ‘fast’.

Good evening,

Today in Language Arts, students worked on using their brainstorming from yesterday to develop body sentences for their paragraphs. We discussed looking over their brainstorming, and finding information that would fit well together, had a similar topic, etc. Then we wrote some sentences inspired by our brainstorming. See the example below:

Brainstorming Body Sentences

Notice that we didn’t use all of the information from our brainstorming, because not all of the information made sense with the main idea we were building. We also made sure that our sentences flowed together. You can see that we begin with talking about nature, then we discuss the environment, and then we discuss places to be active, but we were careful that all of these ideas had a connection and fit together. We also did our best to vary our sentences. We tried to write sentences of different lengths, structures, and we even used some different end punctuation. This will help our writing to be more interesting to our readers. Tomorrow… topic and concluding sentences!

In Math today, students completed their last day of multiplication practice for this unit. We reviewed the three strategies that we have focused on, and students were given time to work on some practice questions in our Math Expert groups. To work in these groups, students move to a specific location in the classroom. All of the students practicing the traditional method work together, all of the students practicing the lattice method work together, and all of the students practicing the box method work together. That way, students are able to ask their elbow partners (3 before me!) if they run into trouble. You can see a review of our current strategies below. Remember, you are allowed to use whatever strategy you choose in your practice!

January 20

 

In Science today, students continued to work on developing the best raincoat to withstand the weather. They are focusing specifically on the materials, zippers, pockets, fit, and hood design of their coats. Today students put together their first draft. Then we watched the video, “Austin’s Butterfly,” below:

We discussed how we could use peer feedback in our work to make our raincoats even better. Students were asked to present their proposed raincoat to another group, who was asked to consider it with a critical eye, and then to provide specific feedback on how they thought it could be improved. This is a really difficult skill we are practicing! It can be difficult to not take feedback negatively or to feel that we have done something wrong. However, learning to listen to our peers and to remember that we can make multiple drafts that make improvements, leads to us submitting a higher quality of work. We are going to use our feedback to make our second drafts tomorrow!

Agenda:

Read 20 minutes

Language Arts:

  • Body sentences – tomorrow!
  • Biography Poems – due January 29th

Math:

  • Practice multiplication (master 1′s, 5′s, 10′s, 9′s)
  • Pgs. 90-91 #2, 3, 5, 7, 11

Science:

  • Bring logbooks Thursday to share research and questions
  • Classroom Science Fair – March 3rd
  • School Science Fair – March 6th

French/Health:

  • FRIENDS – pg. 21 (Share a happy part of your day with your family)

Book Orders – due January 29th

Recorders – MUST HAVE FOR THURSDAY