Student Council Election 2014

We were so impressed with the time and effort so many students put into their campaign for student council representative in Room 13!  All student candidates were confident and well prepared for election day as they delivered their wonderful speeches and displayed their creative posters!

Elexis and Reed fill out their ballots in the private voting booths.

Miruna casts her vote!

Check out all of the candidates' speeches and posters below!

Mahee

   

Jaxon

Ava

 Luke

Elena

Charlie

Emma C.

Brayden

Emma S.

Amir

Megan

Adam

Ariella

Raghav

Isabella

Faisal

Alaina

Levi

Pearl

The class elected Jaxon and Mahee as our 2014-2015 Student Council Representatives.  Ava and Luke will serve as their alternates.  All students did an outstanding job!

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
Students learned to make inferences as readers.  They learned how to make claims about a character's traits and then back up their claims with evidence from the text.  They practiced this important skill for two days.  From our class read aloud, Because of Winn-Dixie, we inferred the character Opal was curious (claim) because she asked her dad to tell her about her mom (evidence from the text).  Making inferences about character's is a great skill to continue practicing at home.  Students also learned to step inside the shoes of a character to make a connection to his/her own life.  They practiced this skill at the carpet with their partner and again on their own during independent reading time.

"Look Whooo's Reading a Good Book"--Reed and Elena show off their book recommendations they wrote.  You can check these out in the hallway the next time you're in the building. 

Writing Workshop
Our writers learned to create lists of small moments for specific strong feelings.  They brainstormed times when they felt excited, nervous, happy, angry, sad, etc.  Then they tried turning one of their ideas into a personal narrative.  They also created a list of "first times" in their writer's notebooks.  They thought of the first time they lost a tooth, the first time they learned to ride a bike, the first time they rode an elephant, the first time they got stitches, etc.  They turned one of their ideas into a personal narrative. At the end of workshop, we gathered together to share our personal narratives.

Alaina and Mahee share their "first time" lists with one another.

Math
Our focus continues to be in the area of multiplication and division.  Your child has written a math fact goal for the first quarter.  He/she chose a basic fact quiz he/she hopes to pass before the end of the quarter.  Remember to continue practicing facts at home.  We take a quiz in class every Tuesday and Thursday.  We also practiced solving area word problems in class this week.  Students learned to multiply the side lengths of a rectangle to get the area.  They have also learned to write the unit.  For example, a rectangle with side lengths of 3 and 4 inches would have an area of 12 square inches.

Science
We have just finished up learning about hot and cold water.  Most recently we have learned about evaporation.  Students know water evaporates and turns into water vapor.  They have also learned water evaporates more quickly in warmer locations.  Currently students are watching an investigation where they put 25 mL of water in four containers of various sizes.  By Monday or Tuesday they will see the water from the container with the largest surface area has evaporated the fastest.  Your child will complete a study guide in class and bring the study guide home on Thursday.  Review the concepts on the study guide with your child.  The Water Test will be on Thursday, October 30.

Reed and Emma find out water expands as it freezes and contracts as it cools. 

Megan slowly drops a green ice cube into a cup of room temperature water.

She watches as the green dye sinks to the bottom because cold water is more dense than room temperature water.

Each groups checks and records the temperature of the water in four different locations in the room.

Students (above and below) use a syringe to put 25 mL of water in four different containers.

All-Star of the Week
Our fabulous All-Star this week was Mahee!  The students loved hearing her sweet parent letter and watching an adorable video of Mahee as a toddler.  We also enjoyed hearing about the items from her sharing sack and looking at the pictures she displayed in class.  She is quite an active girl!  Mahee enjoyed a special lunch with her mom and younger sister as well.

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop: 
This week students focused on retelling and inferring.  Students reviewed how to retell a story with a 5 finger retelling: characters, setting, problem, sequence of events, solution.

Students hold up fingers as they give their retelling to remind themselves of each of the five  parts.

Making inferences and supporting our inferences with evidence from the text will be a huge part of our reading instruction this school year.  Since we are reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, students were asked to highlight 3 parts of the text that they felt were important and make an inference on a sticky note based on their understanding of that part of the text.  This was a 2-day lesson that allowed students to share and discuss their inferences with their "talk partner" on the second day.

Readers also did a Visible Thinking routine this week that we call "Step Inside."  Upon finishing our class read aloud, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane,  students were asked to put themselves in the shoes of the main character to think more deeply about how he was feeling.  The samples below show how some students stepped inside Edward's character.

We are also meeting with students in small groups to revisit and teach lessons that focus on their assigned reading goals for this card marking.

Elena and Miruna work on finding "chunks" in multi-syllable words.

Writing Workshop:
This week students reread all of the pieces they have written so far and chose one story to draft outside of their notebook.  We discussed what a final copy should look like and also introduced the idea of paragraphing.  As students wrote their draft, they were supposed to ask themselves the following questions:

• Did I start my story with an exciting lead?
• Did I use descriptive details to "paint a picture" for the reader?
• Did I use strong verbs?
• Did I tell the internal story by adding what I am thinking and feeling?
• Did I write a solid ending for my story?

Math:

 We finished Unit 1 this week and continued to practice solving and creating word problems.  Students are really doing well with identifying the type of problem and determining whether they need to use multiplication or division.  We also introduced variables and are asking students to now write their equations with a variable as shown below.

A Unit 1 Math Review was sent home over the weekend.  This will help your child prepare for the test in class on Monday.

Social Studies:

We began a new unit this week called The Peopling of The United States.  In this unit, students will understand the meaning of diversity as they learn about the first 5 groups of Americans who migrated to the United States: Native Americans, Latino Americans, European Americans, African Americans, and Asian Americans.  This is a short unit that we will finish up during the week ahead.

All-Star of the Week:

The class loved learning about Jaxon this week!  His sharing sack items included a special wooden bat and a baseball trophy, which made it clear that he is a fan of sports.  His family pictures also showed his love of sports, and we even learned that his family is trying to visit all of the MLB ballparks!  The class especially loved Jaxon's parent letter that was written to the tune of B-I-N-G-O.  The class joined in on the chorus and sang J-A-X-O-N.  His favorite book, Don't Let the Pigeon Stay up Late, was also a big hit with his classmates!

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
Our classroom Peer Recommendation Board was introduced to students as a way for readers to recommend books to others.  Students learned they can recommend books to others they think may be interested in a book they've read.  Students were also assigned new reading partners.  They were given an opportunity to learn more about their partner's reading habits by asking them questions about the kinds of books they like to read.  Partners also met at the end of workshop to share what they had read, focusing on the characters and events in their story.

Zaiver and Levi talk about the kinds of books they like to read.

Amir tells Adam about his book, and Adam asks follow-up questions.

Students can recommend a good book to a friend.

Each student has his/her own pocket which peers can place a recommendation card into.

Writing Workshop
Students learned how to write a strong ending to their personal narratives.  They learned to end their narratives with an emotional ending or with a hope or a wish.  We also introduced paragraph writing to students.  They learned a paragraph consists of a group of sentences around one topic.  Learning how to organize their writing into paragraphs will make their writing easier to read.  Soon students will choose a personal narrative to draft and publish.

Math
At this point we have worked on building fluency with the following multiplication facts: 3s, 4s, 2s, 5s, 9s, and 10s.  Please continue to practice these multiplication facts at home with your child.  He/she takes a math fact quiz each Tuesday and Thursday.  Your child should know which quiz they are currently working towards passing.  Students also learned to multiply and divide with 1 and 0.  They learned you can divide into 0 (0/5=5) but you cannot divide by 0 (5/0= ).  Students were also introduced to various properties of addition and multiplication.  The trickiest property for students to understand was the Associative Property: (2x3) x5 = 2 x (3x5).  We will continue to work on this in class. 


Science
Students have learned A LOT about water through several investigations.  We finished up our first set of investigations with water races.  Students created domes of water of different sizes to race down a slope.  They learned that heavier domes of water win the race as shown in Video 1 below.  During our second set of investigations we learned about hot and cold water.  We made our own bottle thermometers filled with green room temperature water.  Students observed the green water rise in the straw as it was placed in hot water and lower in the straw as it was placed in cold water.  Now we know cold water contracts and hot water expands.  Students also discovered cold water is more dense than room temperature water and hot water is less dense.  Therefore, cold water sinks and hot water floats as shown in Video 2 below.

Mahee and Luke mark their thermometer to begin the investigation.

Alaina and Isabella record their results in their science notebook.

Emma, Pearl, and Charles watch the water as it rises in the straw.

Emma, Faisal, and Elena observe hot water floating because it is less dense.

Field Trip

We had an awesome time on our field trip to Detroit where we were able to tour the Renaissance Center and Ford Field.  You can check out photos from the trip in the slideshow below or click HERE to see the photos individually.

Jog-a-Thon

Although rain caused the jog-a-thon to be held indoors, the students still had a great time at this annual event!  Check out the photos in the slideshow below or click HERE to see the photos individually.