Moving Along Monday

With the delivery of the new Promethean boards imminent, the students returned to a restructured classroom!  Some embraced the new set up....others, not-so-much!  :-)
So, our class meeting centered around the new layout of our classroom and the impact the Promethean board on instruction and routines.  The students had a lot of thoughtful questions and I tried my best to provide answers. 

After our class meeting, we reviewed the characteristics of literary non-fiction.  Then we identified the reasons people keep journals and diaries and the intended audience of this type of writing.  After that, we read a journal entry from the The Hog Island Logs of Walter Anderson and identified the specific details he included in his entry and what questions we had after reading it.  We recognized that the details he included were the memories he wanted to preserve and the questions we had were not answered since the intended audience (himself) would know the answers to our questions so he wouldn't be wondering about those things.

Next, we read an opinion article from the book Are Organized Sports Better than Pick Up Games and identified how the author's word choice strength ed his argument.  Additionally, I modeled using an online thesaurus to improve the student's own writing.

Today's independent work includes the students using a thesaurus to improve and revise the word choice in their opinion paragraph rough draft.  Additionally, they will read a two sided article about reducing, reusing and recycling (science) and explain what each concept means (according to the article) in their science journal.

Sharks:  We met and discussed our plans to read about a famous person to locate answers to the questions we have about them and then to find a way to present our new knowledge.  I introduced a series of biographies about current, popular stars.

In math we identified strategies to solve elapsed time word problems when the start time is unknown.  Today, along with the number line and t-chart, I modeled using subtraction with regrouping.  The trick being that when we regroup we are trading an hour for 60 minutes.  The students completed a couple of practice problems independently, while Mrs. Head and I met with small groups.  Both groups practiced identifying time on an analog clock, to the minute, and using number lines to solve elapsed time word problems.  There is an elapsed time word problem worksheet for homework.

Following lunch and outdoor recess the students continued their independent work while I met with more groups.

Cheetahs:  We met and discussed how illustrations can convey more information to the readers (in addition to the text in the story).  We used the picture on page 121 as a starting point for this discussion.  We will begin a new book tomorrow.

Yellow Jackets:  In group we reread The Green Man, making notes along the way at points where the text gives hints as to who is the green man.  Then we shared our notes.

Snakes:  These students concentrated on completing their opinion rough draft and revising for word choice using the thesaurus.

At the end of the day we discussed the idea of an object, such as a water bottle, having a life cycle.  We viewed a web site to help us better understand this concept.