It's been another great week! We continue to learn what quality work looks like and how to be a quality producer. We are learning to reread our work for clarity and to check to make sure that our answers make sense. These are great life long skills to have.
Things continue to rock in math class. We added an additional challenge choice to our repertoire this week. We learned how to solve a logic puzzle. There is a lot of inferencing that goes on and these puzzles really stretch our reading and logical thinking skills. These puzzles are so addictive that some years we've even had parents ask for copies of our puzzles. :-) We are finishing up unit 1 and should begin unit 2, which has an emphasis on place value and the traditional multiplication algorithm, next week.
In science this week we continued with our inquiry projects with Mrs. Stuhr and figured out how to make a circuit with a switch to make a light turn on and off. When we completed our circuit we discovered that putting a compass under one of the wires caused our compass to go wacky. We determined that flowing electrons create a magnetic field! We also had an opportunity to watch Bill Nye as he revisited key ideas on magnetism with us.
In reading this week we finished our class novel Animal House and Iz. Iz's mother does end up getting a dog that lives with her at her deluxe town house. At Dad and Alice's house, Jack is cured of his psittacosis and decides to keep Elvis, his parrot. Logan, Jack, Joey, and Iz learn that their household will be expanding but not with a dog but with a new baby. We had a lot of laughs while we enjoyed the fun story with so many themes that we can relate to.
Our new read aloud takes us back to the 1970's. The Liberation of Gabriel King. The setting is in Hollowell, Georgia 1976. As we read there are mini lessons on identifying literary elements. Class discussions also 'touch' on the many historical aspects such as the election of Jimmy Carter, the Bicentennial, and Watergate. Some of the vocabulary words we work with include: liberation, segregate, integrity, oppression, portent, and waylaid.
Our Daily Oral Language sentences told us about Aesop, so Mrs. Conley read aloud a few of her favorites including The Fox and The Stork, and The Lion and the Mouse. We learn so much grammar and punctuation during these lessons.
In writing we are working on leads. Students are beginning their prompts using action, thought shots, describing the setting, and dialogue. We read aloud a story called Goosebumps that was written by a 5th grader. We discussed what elements of the story work well. We identified the figurative language that was used and hi-lighted the 'showing not telling' that we liked. We also looked at the paragraphing.
Conversation key words:
- logic puzzle
- circuit
- compass/magnetic field
- Bill Nye the Science Guy
- Andrew Clements book talk
- alliteration ice cream flavors
- leads
- Aesop's fables
- lollygag
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