We started our day with a 2 handed penny addition activity. Pairs of students were given 10 pennies. They took turns where one student would grab a pile of pennies, and the other would take the rest. Through doing this activity multiple times, they learned that there are many different ways to make 10. Here is a video of David and Alida working it out together. I absolutely LOVE how David self corrects himself in this video, working out an answer that makes sense. After repeating this many times, students worked with their partner to find 11 different combinations to make 10. I sent home a follow up activity this evening if you think your child requires more assistance with this activity. In Language Arts today, we continued working on the 'Daily 5' with our new addition of 'Meet With the Teacher.' It is amazing how well the 'Daily 5' allows for Soa and I to give reading instruction in a way that helps every learner improve at their own level.
During our Unit of Inquiry block, we sorted pictures of things that were living and not living. We followed this up by walking around the campus, while drawing and labelling all of the living things we could find. You can find your child's documentation of their learning on their portfolio. After a brief conversation about peace. We wrapped up our time together before heading off to PE and Malagasy.
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We began this morning working with number stories, and making tallies. Students polled their classmates asking if they are right handed, or left handed and taking tallies. After completing their questionnaire, they had to work out how many more friends were right handed than left handed. Please continue to work on finding how many more of something there is during your daily Math at home. During Language Arts, we added 'Read to the Teacher' to our Daily 5 roster. Students broke into levelled groups and took turns reading with Miss Soa and I while other students read to self, or worked on writing. I am so impressed with how this group works independently. This allows Miss Soa and I to provide more focused attention to small group instruction. After the Daily 5, we read a variety of interrelated statements, and worked with friends to figure out what the main idea was. We then read 'Ivan - The Remarkable The Remarkable True Story of the Shopping Mall Gorilla,' as seen in the YouTube video above. Students were asked to identify the main idea, and provide three supporting details that backed up their answer. I will be posting this work on their portfolios on Friday, along with their work from the Lorax yesterday. Today we tuned into our new unit of inquiry. We begin by going over the central idea and lines of inquiry, then wrote what we know about life cycles. It is amazing to see how much we will know by the end of the unit compared to now. I LOVE this unit of inquiry.
The strategy we used to begin the unit is called "Picture Priorities". It asks students to rank, sequence and/or make sense of a series of pictures as a way of helping them to consider what they already know and/or how they feel about a topic. I think this strategy is fantastic because it gets kids thinking! It's a great way to assess their prior knowledge. We gave the students the pictures along with a piece of paper on which to order the pictures and record their thoughts. I didn't tell them anything about the content of the pictures; I wanted to leave it totally to their interpretations. My directions were, "I'm giving your group a set of pictures, Your job is to figure out how they go together in a meaningful way. Share your thinking and then you must agree on how to arrange them on the paper." This got our little ones thinking! Miss Soa and I walked around the room to monitor and make sure that all group members were contributing their ideas. Once groups came to a consensus about the order of their pictures, Here is a video of Josephine, Alida, Tina, and Asher agreeing on how to order and sequence their pictures. We finished our first inquiry cycle! Our action was to learn more about each others cultures, and try new things, by eating food, dressing, and playing games from each others cultures. Thank you to all of the parents that brought in food for the class to share. Our next unit of inquiry is on Life Cycles. In Math, we finished unit 1 with an assessment of our learning. This went home today. Please review any necessary concepts with your child. I was very happy with everyone's success. Today we began unit 2. In our lesson, we learned how to 'count on,' by putting the bigger of the two numbers in our head, and counting the smaller number on our hands. We also learned about turn around facts, knowing that 3+8 is the same as 8+3. We learned that we can switch equations around so that the bigger number comes first. We will continue working on this skill throughout the week, During our literacy block, we learned how to identify the main idea. We read the Lorax and identified the main idea and details together, filling out a graphic organizer with pictures. We will be working on using question words and finding the main idea throughout the week.
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March 2017
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