Weekly Update

Reading & Writing Workshop:
The students are loving our poetry unit, and we are so impressed with the poems they are crafting!  This week, we focused on adding new "tools" to our poetry toolbox.  The "tools," or poetic devices, that were taught included repetition, personification, and similes.  After looking for examples of these poetic devices in poems during reading workshop, students tried adding them to their own poems in writing workshop.  We also looked closely at how line breaks can change the meaning and rhythm of a poem.  After noticing that some students' poems were still sounding like "stories" rather than poems, we also showed students how to turn long phrases and sentences into shorter phrases by eliminating the less important words.  This strategy helped make the students' writing sound more poetic!

Students have been working with their poetry partners during reading workshop to locate and discuss the poetic devices they learn about during the mini-lesson.

At the end of writing workshop each day, students love taking turns in the author's chair to share the poems they have written.

Math:

We continued our geometry unit this week with lessons on "decomposing" polygons.  This strategy helps students break shapes into multiple rectangles.  They find the area of each rectangle separately and then add them together to determine the total area of the polygon.  Students also solved area and perimeter word problems and used tangrams shapes to find the area of different figures.  A unit review was sent home over the weekend to help students study and prepare for the test this week. 

Social Studies:

We continued our region tour this week with stops in Carlsbad Cavern National Park in New Mexico and El Paso, Texas.  We also stopped at the Hoover Dam.  During this tour stop, students worked in teams to solve two problems that engineers faced when building the Hoover Dam.

1. How could they harden 66 million tons of cement in less than 5 years?  (If left to cool on its own, that much cement would take 100 years to set!)

2. What should be done with the Colorado River during the construction of the Hoover Dam? (The Colorado River is a fast-moving river that runs right through the site where they planned to build the dam.)

Students worked in teams and acted as construction engineers when presenting their solutions to the 2 problems to their classmates.

Economics/Class Store:

The class store was open again this week, and students were SO excited to spend the money that they earned in our classroom economy!  Before the class store, students learned about the concept of Inflation.  As the school year has progressed, students have earned a good deal of money.  Many students have become fairly "rich"with all of the All-Star Cash that they have earned and saved.   Since students have more money now, the prices at the class store were increased to reflect the state of our strong economy.  Students were not thrilled to see higher prices at the class store, but it was a great way to teach the concept of inflation!!

All-Star of the Week:

Alexandra was our awesome All-Star of the Week!  She was excited to share 3 special items from her sharing sack on Monday, along with some great photos of her siblings and her beloved cat named Avatar.  Her mom also wrote a wonderful letter to the class telling us 10 things that we may or may not know about Alexandra.  We learned she is a total animal lover!  Her mom joined her in the cafeteria for Lunch Buddy Day on Thursday!

Weekly Update

Reading & Writing Workshop
We began our poetry unit.  Students started off the week by completing a See-Think-Wonder.  They added poetry books to their book boxes and spent time reading poems for enjoyment.  Students learned poetry can be written about ordinary objects.  We read several poems together and later used these poems as mentor texts.  Students tried to write their own poetry about ordinary objects during Writing Workshop.  We also learned poets include sensory images in their poems.  Poets do this to give the reader a clear visual image.  The reader can feel, taste, smell, hear what the poet is describing when the poet uses sensory images.  Students read many poems and recorded lines from poems which included sensory images (touch, taste, sight, sound, smell).  During Writing Workshop, students tried writing poems focusing on including sensory images in their own poems.

Math
We have continued learning geometry concepts in Unit 6.  Students reviewed the difference between area and perimeter.  We also practiced writing equations to find the area of a large rectangle by splitting it into two smaller rectangles.  Students used their skills of solving two step word problems to find the unknown side length of a rectangle.  Students should understand adding all side lengths around the outside of a shape will give the total perimeter and multiplying length times width (adjacent sides) will give the area of a shape.

Science
We have started our final science unit--Measurement.  Students have learned the difference between a standard and nonstandard unit of measurement.  They also practiced estimating lengths (in meters and centimeters).  Then they used their meter sticks to accurately measure the objects.  Last, they recorded the difference between their estimation and actual measurement.
Students also recently dissected owl pellets.  We learned owls are not able to digest everything they eat.  Instead they regurgitate the things they are unable to digest in the form of a pellet.  Students used tweezers and toothpicks to carefully pick apart the owl pellet to discover the many hidden bones, teeth, and skulls of animals.  Students will have the opportunity to dissect owl pellets one more time.

All-Star of the Week
Orlando was our outstanding All-Star this week!  One classmate wrote in his compliment book he thought Orlando was a "quiet kid" when he met him at the beginning of the year but has learned this is not true!  We have learned Orlando is outgoing and fun!  He is also a good friend.  Students enjoyed Orlando's read aloud, photos, sharing sack, and parent letter.  Orlando also enjoyed a special lunch with his sister on Thursday!  This All-Star had a great birthday week!

Huskies Helping Huskies
Some students from Room 13 attended the school dance after school Friday.  The dance was held to raise money for the Mahoney Family.  Your child can donate $1 and wear a hat to school on Wednesdays.  There will also be a spaghetti dinner and silent auction on May 19 for the family.

Weekly Update

Grandparent & Special Person Day:
What a great time students had sharing the morning with their grandparents and other special guests on Thursday!  Our guests spent time doing some morning math work, listening to students read aloud favorite picture books in the library, eating breakfast in the LGI, and listening to students read aloud their country reports and informational books while they ate.  Back in the classroom, students interviewed their guests to learn more about what life was like when they were in third grade.  Students loving learning more about their guests and realized how much times have changed.  Check out TONS of great photos from our special day in the slideshow below.  To see larger versions of the photos, double click on any photo.

 

Reading & Writing Workshop:
We spent most of last week finishing up our informational books.  Students spent a great deal of time on this project and were so excited to finally publish their reports.  Both the graded rough drafts and the final books will be coming home this week for students to share with their parents.  We ask that (only) the final books be returned to school so that we can display them outside our classroom for other Hill students and staff to enjoy.

Math:
We continued Unit 6 in math: Geometry.  We focused mostly on quadrilaterals, which are polygons with 4 sides.  The quadrilaterals we have studied include rectangles, squares, parallelograms, rhombuses, and trapezoids.  Students practiced drawing different quadrilaterals that matched specific descriptions and describing the relationships among the various types of quadrilaterals.

Social Studies:
We began our tour of the Southwest Region this week.  Geographically, this is a large region, but it only has 4 states!  We are traveling on a big rig during this region.  Our first two stops were in Monument Valley, home of the Navajo Indian tribe, and Phoenix, Arizona, the hottest large city in America.

Star of the Week:
Gloria was our awesome All-Star of the Week!  On Monday, she loved showing her sharing sack items to her classmates, especially a special snow globe that she got from her grandma in Romania.  She also did a wonderful job reading her favorite book aloud with excellent fluency.  Her mom was her lunch buddy on Tuesday, but she was lucky to also see her mom and her grandpa again on Thursday for Grandparents Day!

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
We wrapped up our Informational Reading Unit this week.  Students worked together with their reading partner to study the pictures and text features of a subtopic within their text set.  Students also learned that readers recognize the text structure as they study a subtopic of interest to help them understand what they are reading and to teach others what they are learning.  Finally, students noticed how information on the same subtopic can be presented differently, and some texts provide more details than others.

Writing Workshop
Students wrote an "About the Author" blurb to include in their Informational Final Draft Booklets.  Students also began copying their Table of Contents, Headings, and Chapters into their Final Draft Booklets.  Their booklets will include illustrations as well as photographs printed from the computer lab.  Students are hoping to share their Informational Booklets with their special guest/s on Thursday!

Math
We began Unit 6 this week.  In this unit students will learn many different geometry concepts.  In the first lesson, we focused on the triangle.  Vocabulary words which were introduced or reviewed include: ray, angle, 90 degree angle, triangle, quadrilateral, polygon, concave, convex, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, and decagon.  Students learned to describe triangles by the types of angles each had.  Students also learned to describ triangles by the number of sides of equal length.  Finally we practiced naming various polygons and building polygons using triangles.

All-Star of the Week
Our spectacular All-Star last week was Madeline!  She had been looking forward to her special week for quite some time!  The class enjoyed her sharing sack items and her informational read aloud.  We were also impressed with the acrostic poem her family wrote about her.  Maddie enjoyed a special lunch with her dad on Tuesday as well!

Troy Fire Department Visits Hill
The Troy Fire Department visited first, third, and fifth grade classrooms on Thursday.  It's always a good review to hear important safety tips!  Please make sure you check the batteries in your smoke detectors at home.  Also, you should have a meeting spot as a family outside of your home in the case of a fire.  Check out a few photos below, which include pictures of our class crawling out of the "smokehouse" to avoid the smoke in the air.

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop:
In reading workshop, students are exploring text sets with their nonfiction reading partners.  Each partnership chose a set of 3-4 books on the same topic.  (Sets included frogs, snakes, whales, sharks, tornados, hurricanes, Jupiter, soccer, the moon, etc.)  Students predicted what type of subtopics they would find in their books, accessed their prior knowledge, and then began exploring the actual subtopics in each of the books.  They compared the texts to each other and picked one of the texts to explore more in depth.  Students practiced the skill of summarizing as they chose a single subtopic in their book and focused on finding the main idea and supporting details.  They wrote short summaries and shared them with the class.  We will continue to use the text sets this week to practice more reading skills.

Writing Workshop:
Students finished the rough drafts of their informational "expert" books.  Their books include a table of contents, an introduction, 4 chapters with information about each subtopic, and a closing.  Students used a detailed rubric to assess their own rough draft and turned it in to be assessed by the teacher.  We will be meeting with students this week to discuss revisions/improvements that students might need to make before beginning their final books.  Students will also be writing an "About the Author" section.

An example of a student's rough draft

Rough Draft Booklet Assessment Rubric

Math:
We finished Unit 5!  It was a challenging unit with different types of multi-step word problems.  Students took the final test on Thursday before the break.  Some students still need to finish part of the test, so you can expect to see the corrected test in your child's homework folder by the end of the week.

Social Studies:
We finished touring the Midwest Region before the break.  Students completed their travel journals and worked on adding the souvenirs they collected along the way to their region binder scrapbooks.  The final test will be on Tuesday, April 5th.


March is Reading Month (In Review):
We finished up our March is Reading Month activities the week before break.  Students were SO excited to reach not only the original "reading minute"goal that won them a pizza party but also the additional reading goal we set that earned them a "music" day.  The kids loved bringing in a variety of devices so that could listen to their favorite songs!

Mystery Readers:
We had our last mystery readers of the month visit our room and read some great books!

Grace & Maddie's Mom

Hemali's Sister

Mapping Our Reading Travels

On this map of the United States, students are now pinpointing the places where their books have taken them.  Each student has a different color tack on our map key. If a place in the U.S. is mentioned in a book they are reading, they get to add a tack to the location on the map!