Wonderful Wednesday

The children began their day in the media center. 

When they returned to class we gained some background knowledge about Africa by viewing a PowerPoint of photographs taken of the continent and locating the continent using Google Earth.  After that, we used text features to identify the meaning of the word continent, to help us clarify information we read about Africa using the online Encyclopedia Britannica article.

Next, I shared a student's writing sample, written by one of our classmates yesterday, of their introductory section for the tech tools research piece.  After that, we revisited the Heating and Cooling mentor writing piece and identified what information was contained in the second paragraph, about the past.  Then, using our observations, I modeled writing a paragraph about the past, using my topic, football helmets.

Independent work, today, will include the students drafting their paragraph about the past of their tech tool, making a card for the cancer patients and gluing their letter inside, and using Google Earth and the online Encyclopedia Britannica to learn more about Africa, on the iPads.

This morning I met with small groups of students to work on their writing pieces.

In math we used our knowledge of area to solve a word problem.  The lesson can be viewed here.  Unfortunately, the lesson took longer than anticipated and we did not cover enough material for the classwork or homework I had planned.  SO, for homework tonight, the children should go to the virtual manipulative web site and practice using the site.  I would LOVE for students to construct a rectangle using counters (on the site) and write an equation to represent the area and then print it and bring it in...HOWEVER...this is NOT required! 

For example, they could construct a rectangle with 3 rows of 7 counters in each row.  The equation would be 3x7=21ft.sq.

Following lunch and outdoor recess the students continued working independently while I worked with small groups of students on their research and writing.  Therefore, reading groups did not meet.

We ended the day with science.  First, the students discussed how to separate their mixtures into their original components...BUT, then I ADDED another component to each group's mixture.  So, the new mixtures all contain rocks, sand and salt.  The students then began brainstorming testable ways to separate their new mixtures.  Stay tuned...