Room 13: Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
We are finishing up our "Bringing Characters to Life" unit. Last week students really analyzed the characters in both "Because of Winn Dixie" and in their own fiction books to look for patterns of behavior. Students created "theories" about these characters and have learned that these theories often need to be revised over time. We focused specifically on how most fictional characters often struggle and grow over the course of a book.

Writing Workshop
After creating a story mountain to make a plan for a second personal narrative story, students are now using the elaboration strategies we have been teaching as they begin their draft. We are teaching students how to use paragraphs to organize their thoughts and how to use quotation marks to punctuate the dialogue in their stories.

Math
Students continue to practice writing and solving multiplication and division equations. Last week we focused specifically on 7s and 8s. While students are not yet expected to memorize these facts, we worked on strategies for solving facts that they do not know by heart. We are now working on building fluency with 0s - 10s multiplication and division facts.

Social Studies
We had an exciting week on our Northeast region tour! On Monday, students visited Boston, MA and learned about some of the battles of the American Revolution. We even pretended to take a walk on the Freedom trail.

On Tuesday, we visited Hershey, Pennsylvania. We took a virtual tour of the Hershey Chocolate Factory and learned about mass production.