Weekly Update: February 28- March 4

Greetings!

Points to note:

 The school practiced a “Shelter in Place” drill on Tuesday afternoon. It is always good to be prepared by practicing what to do in case of severe weather. The children did a really nice job during the drill and took this practice time seriously.

* The children had some engaging hands-on learning during science this week! Read about it below...

* Noah was our Character Counts winner for the month of February! What a great job Noah does of setting a solid example for the kids around him. Way to go!

* We read a few more books our class received from the Book Fair this week! We enjoyed the cute little story about a confused pig who wanted to lay an egg called, "Pig's Egg" from Emily, as well as a funny book about a rambuctious little puppy in "Katie Loves the Kittens" from Matt and Noah. Thanks, guys!! The children and I are enjoying our new stories!

Spelling

This week our focus was on words with the /aw/ sound, spelled ‘aw’ and ‘au.” Next week, will be our "Week 6," which is our review week. The children will create their own spelling lists!

Reading

The theme of the week was Animals Habitats and Homes. In our main text this week we read "Nutik, the Wolf Pup." It is about a young Eskimo boy who takes care of a sick wolf pup. The boy’s sister was rescued by wolves, so it was their turn to nurse two weak young pups back to health. Of course one pup decides to stay with the little boy. Our comprehension strategy was making inferences, so as we read the story we mixed what we read with what we know to better understand the story. The children made some excellent inferences! New vocabulary words from this text were: beloved, glanced, gleamed, noble, promised, and wiggled. We looked closely at word parts and inflected endings this week. The children also learned about using encyclopedias as a reference tool, as well as identifying headings in a text that can help us locate specific information.

Math

The children had a “Data Day” during math this week. They broke into small groups and each student had a role of either "jumper," "line judge," "marker," and "measurer." They took turns taking standing jumps. The children recorded each of their 2 jumps, and wrote down the greater of the two on a post-it note. We then sorted the data gathered by our whole class in order by size, found the range, and then located the median jump! The children learned how to complete a frequency table, line plot, and a bar graph based on data we also collected through measuring our arm spans. We reviewed several times how to find the median in a given set of data! It is important for the children to remember to sort the data before finding the “middle!” This was a question that several children missed on their math test because they forgot to organize the information first.

Coming up next week is Unit 8- Fractions! Your child has their new Family Letter inside their red home folder if you'd like to preview what's involved in our next unit!

Science

The children are observing examples of motion all around them! They participated in several explorations this week. During one, the children timed each other walking backward, jumping, and crawling along preset intervals marked along the gym floor. We were testing to see how speed is impacted by different motions. Once all of the children recorded their times in their Science Notebooks, the children and I used our math skills to find the Mode (most common) distance for each. We found that in 5 seconds, the average student in our class was able to walk backwards 6 meters, crawl 7 meters, and jump with two feet for 10 meters. We came up with ideas why the speeds vary. Some great ideas include comfort level, moving forward more easily than moving backward, and even friction with the floor! Great thinking!

Another exploration we started involved the movement of toy cars. Given a heavy cardboard tube, a ruler, a rubberband, and a straw, the children investigated ways they could get the car to move, and at different speeds. These innovative thinkers were blowing their cars, moving them from the carpet to the tile floor, creating ramps by opening their desktops, and even finding a way to project their toy car with their rubberbands. We began taking notes in our journals and will finish our drawings and notes during our discussion on Monday. The children are really enjoying this unit so far!

Thank you for keeping up with our classroom events and learning!

Have a fantastic weekend!