Terrific Tuesday

The children began this dreary day in art.

When they returned to class we began our math rotations.  The central lesson today focused on calculating the area of a rectangle using multiplication. 

During guided practice students used dice to randomly identify 2 factors and then used those numbers to calculate the product.  After that they wrote 3 more number sentences (1 multiplication and 2 division) for their newly determined fact family.  They repeated this process to practice their basic facts.

Finally, during the technology rotation, the children watched a Learn Zillion lesson using arrays to calculate the area of a rectangle.

For homework, the students are to practice their basic facts using math fact cafe or that's a fact.

We began our reading and writing block by reviewing a model, or mentor, text , provided by the county, for the second quarter inquiry project.  My sole purpose, today, was for the students to see what types of information they needed to gather during their research.  While I did discuss the structure briefly, today's lesson was not to serve as a direct writing lesson.

While I meet with reading groups the students will work on reading group assignments, finish their narrative poems and complete their research.

Sharks:  We reviewed chapter 8 and read chapter 9.  As we read we discussed the changes Gregory is experiencing and how other characters might have been feeling.  Tonight they need to reread chapter 9.

Following lunch and indoor recess the students continued working independently.  I attempted to meet with reading groups but many students need help with their research...I couldn't say no.  :-(  So, I attempted to help students.

Dolphins:  These students worked with me all afternoon on their research.  They turned in their reading group books and will get a new one after Thanksgiving Break.

Cheetahs and Pandas:  These two groups read chapter 10 in their respective books.  They marked the main event in the chapter with a sticky note and identified the action leading to this event on the post-it.  We will go over this either tomorrow or Monday.

We ended the day with students asking testable questions about how observable properties of a piece of chalk will change when a process is applied.  Then they conducted an experiment to find out and recorded the outcome.

Tomorrow is an early release day and it is Grandparent's Day. 

Permission slips for next week's field trip were sent home today.  Please send them in as soon as possible but I will certainly understand if you can't return it until Monday!