Thriving Thursday

The children began their day in art.  When they returned we did a cool lesson, in my opinion, where the students illustrated a poem and then shared the key words or phrases that inspired them to draw their picture the way they did.  The purpose of this lesson was to help the children notice that words and phrases used by authors help us visualize and comprehend what we read.  In turn, we, as writers, need to choose our words carefully, so that our readers can visualize our writing as we did when we wrote it.  Wow, that was wordy...I hope it makes sense!  :-)  You can view the lesson here.

After that, I modeled using my storyboard to write a rough draft for our facing the unknown writing piece.

Unfortunately, we ran out of time and did not get to small groups this morning.

In math we used patterns on a multiplication table and our knowledge of "easier" basic facts to solve more challenging facts.  You can view the lesson here BUT, I warn you, this isn't one of my smoother lessons!  Don't laugh too hard!  :-)

While the students practiced their 8's facts, Mrs. Head worked with a small group determining whether a word problem requires multiplication or division to find the answer.  I pulled a small group to review finding the least common multiple and then we began talking about factors and prime numbers.

Everyone has to finish the 8's basic fact worksheet for homework and we will have a quiz tomorrow.

Following lunch and outdoor recess the students worked on writing the rough draft for the facing unknown writing piece, using their storyboards.  I met with some groups.

Cheetahs:  We met and reread pages 5-7.  Then we identified words and phrases that were used repetitively and reread the topic sentence.  After that, I wrote a main idea statement.  Then we shared the main ideas they wrote last night for homework.  We discussed how to improve those statements which needed it and pointed out the positives, too!

Snakes:  We reviewed the -oi and -oa letter combinations.  Then we reread up to page 11, working on fluency.  Tonight the children need to reread up to page 11, again, working on fluency.

We ended the day by reviewing natural and human physical characteristics and then visited google maps to locate examples of these.