Week of September 21st
Thank you so much to the Austin Geological Society for enriching our theme!
Also…Happy Birthday Justin!!! Thanks for sharing a treat with us :)
In ELA with Ms Andrea…This week our reading & writing was on geese! Together, we read an informational text called A Goose Migrates. Next, we dissected the reading to determine its “gist.” Then we turned our attention to our prompt of the week, which specifically asked about goslings. I am so proud of our young writers’ tenacity as we work to build their writing stamina. They worked hard and produced wonderful paragraphs this week.
In Phonics, we reviewed many more word families with the short vowel sounds, this week focusing on /o/ (-op, -ot, -og), /u/ (-ug, -ut, -un) and /e/ (-ed, -et, -en). Our sight words were: to, do, am, an, on, is and it.
Ms. Emma’s ELA group…slowed down the writing process and continued to work on our prompt from last week about animals. Students used highlighters to connect information from the text to their writing. This allowed them to more clearly see exactly how they were using evidence to support their response. Although they were only tasked with finding 3 pieces of evidence, many students went above and beyond with 5! This resulted in a nearly 8 sentence long paragraph! We are still working on creating those topic sentences and conclusions to formalize their writing, but I am so proud of the meat of these writing prompt responses! In phonics we tackled our glued sounds: -ing, -ang, -ong, -ung, -ink, -ank, -onk, -unk. We also had our first official spelling check in using our high frequency words. Typically we practice these check in’s with white boards, but this week was the real deal seated at their tables using a pencil and paper. In reading we divided into pairs and chose a fiction story to dissect and analyze. After collecting information like characters, setting, conflict, and resolution the pairs presented their work to the class.
In Ms. Andrea’s Math Group…is deep into our unit on Place Value. We’ve been representing and comparing numbers in the thousands! We’re also pushing our skip counting skills to their limits and extending them. Along the way we’ve been learning new math games and enjoying playing them with friends.
Ms. Emma’s math group…nearly mastered subtraction to 20! We started with an overview of all the various strategies we can use to solve these problems. Then we put them to use playing “Blast off” and “Subtraction Starfish”. Students also had a day full of solving word problems and writing equations to match. Next we played “Subtraction Smash” using playdough to really solidify our understanding of subtraction problems. Finally, we explored place value blocks and broke down numbers into their written form, expanded form, and block form.
In theme…became rocks and acted out the rock cycle! First they were tiny pieces of sediment that started to feel A LOT of pressure and compact. Then even more heat and pressure made them so hot they had to fan themselves. Next, all that compression turned them into a metamorphic rock which meant magma was oozing them onto the ground. Once they started to cool off and become an igneous rock they were frozen like a statue. Weather and erosion headed their way until they once again crumbled into a piece of sediment.
We also explored geodes – how they are formed, how they are opened, and we even made the base to one of our own!
Next we got a very special visit from The Austin Geological Society! We are so grateful to Sylvia for presenting us with a fun activity on making our very own sedimentary rock. We used different pieces of “sediment” (starbursts, nerds, and fruit roll ups) and compacted them together with lots of pressure until they fused. We even enjoyed a few pieces of extra candy after the lesson :)
Finally, we saw rocks in the real world on our rock observation exploration! Students used recording sheets to write their findings of the rock’s color, texture, luster, and size measured in cm. This was a very fun way to apply our knowledge to the real world! We heard many students theorizing about what kind of rock they may be looking at!