We began this Friday with guest readers for Read Across Yarmouth. Ms. Parr was our first guest reader and she shared a few chapters of her favorite book, Peace is Every Step. Ms. Parr led us through a few mindfulness exercises as well. We all thoroughly enjoyed every minute. We also had Ms. Walsh, Mrs. Garrou, and Mrs. La Plume share their favorite read alouds. Our guest readers were able to hear from our students as they read the titles of the books that they are currently reading. We also shared what reading brings to our lives. A few quotes were: I read to relax, I read to go on adventures with Pegasus, and I read to go to Olympus. The students were wonderful listeners.
In reading this week we read about Christopher Columbus. We worked on previewing nonfiction. Our lessons included how to look closely at pictures, captions, maps, and charts. We discussed the key ideas that we were able to get from previewing. Next, we looked at the titles, headings, and bold faced words and rephrased them into questions. For example the heading in Columbus's First Voyage - our questions were: When did he go?, What happened on the journey?, and What did he find? The students all have their own European explorers that they will begin reading about today in class. In connection with this new unit, our class read aloud is Morning Girl. It is about a twelve-year-old Taino girl and her younger brother, Star Boy. The story recreates life on a Bahamian island in 1492.
In language arts, we are continuing our Daily Oral Language lessons. We are working on 20 vocabulary words from our European Explorers unit. We are reviewing them on quizlet, defining them, and using them in sentences.
Fractions continued…….
Our study of fractions continued this week as we investigated different names for numbers. For example, 4 1/5, could be named as 3 6/5, 2 11/5, 1 16/5, or 21/5. The ability to create equivalent fractions set us up for the end of the week when we began adding and subtracting mixed numbers. These skills help us trade for subtracting and for renaming when our answer contains an improper fraction.
Our study of exploration led us to find that there were already people in North and South America before Columbus “discovered” them. We learned about six different Native American peoples and what their lives were like before the Europeans arrived. We also used some visuals to understand that in addition to the six we looked at, there were many, many more tribes spread across the continent at this time in history.
Conversation starters:
- Read Across America
- Skippyjon Jones (Acadians)
- Marco Polo
- improper fraction, mixed number
- Morning Girl
- Columbus
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