Thriving Thursday---It's a zoo in here!

Today, being Thursday, is our flip-flop day.  We began our day with math and went to music afterwards.

The teacher math rotation was a continuation of yesterday's lesson.  Students constructed rectangles with a given area and wrote a multiplication sentence to match.  I encouraged the children to use skip counting to determine it was possible to create a rectangle of a certain area with a number.  For example, if the area is equal to 12 sq. in., skip count by 3's and you land on 12, so you can have rows of three.  If you try 5, though, you don't land on 12.  So, a rectangle with rows of 5 isn't possible.

The technology rotation had the students working on their basic facts using the app Kidgits on the iPad.

The third rotation was a zoo--literally!  In small groups, working collaboratively, the children began creating zoos on large grid paper.  How did this connect to math?  Well, they need to identify the area, and write a multiplication sentence that matches, of each cage!  I tweeted a picture of an example!  Follow me on Twitter:  @runnerdana.

For HOMEWORK the students have an area WS measuring the area of rectangles in square inches.  We will have a quiz tomorrow covering addition, subtraction and area.

We began our reading and writing block with students working collaboratively in small groups to analyze Mufaro's Beautiful daughters to identify the key details in the story.  After sharing groups' lists, we learned that central message and theme are very closely related and are the lesson in the story.  The lesson is never specifically written down, it is implied through the key details.  Additionally, it is a global lesson, not specific to the book or story.  Finally, we identified the central message

While I worked with reading groups the students continued yesterday's reading group assignments and working towards completing the draft of their opinion paragraph for their community action project.

Sharks:  The students watched the Learn Zillion video about main idea, together, and , as a group, they worked to complete their 3-2-1 summarizers.  For homework they need to reread, "Into the Rain Forest".

Following lunch and indoor recess the students continued working independently while I met with more groups.

Dolphins:  We had a mini pop quiz of their focus words for this week.  Then we did a word chain starting with the word soil (the title of their new book).  In a word chain, we start with a word and add words, each time changing one sound.  For example: soil, boil, coil, coin, join

After that I did a book talk for the new text, Soil.  Then the students whisper read up to page 12 as I listened in.  For HOMEWORK the students need to reread pages 3-12.

Cheetahs:  The students reread the article, "Aquarius" and identified the 3 most repeated content words on a sticky note.  IN group we shared these words and tallied our most repeated words.  Then we reviewed the text features and discussed how it all fits together.  For HOMEWORK the students need to reread the article, "Aquarius" and identify the main idea (1 sentence) on a sticky note.

Pandas:  The students re watched the Learn Zillion retell important information from a chapter and completed a 3-2-1 summarizer.  In group we shared the summarizer and discussed the ideas they learned about retelling important information from a chapter.  For HOMEWORK they need to read chapter16.

We ended the day with a social studies lesson.  We reviewed the concepts of goods (a thing you buy because you want or need it) and services (an action someone provides, at a fee, that you need or want).  Then we identified services provided by our local government through taxpayer dollars.  The students then wrote about two of these services and how they help the community.