At last a full week of school! After feeling like we accomplished nothing last week, this week it seems like we were able to delve deep into math, reading and writing. That feels great!
We are nearing the end of our geometry unit, which is bittersweet because the kids are loving it. In one lesson we told the students to go to the Icy Slides Flips and Turns website to discover what flips, turns, and slides mean in geometry. They were so focused and loved being in control of their learning. They understood the concepts better than if we would have modeled for them and given them a paper-pencil activity to do.
After the students learned these geometry concepts, we put examples in our math notebooks.
Then it was time to move on to 3-dimensional shapes. Using the Ellison paper cutter, we made solid shape patterns for the students to assemble. We wanted them to see how they looked flat, and predict what shape each one would make when we folded them into solids. After assembling them, we identified the number of faces, edges, and vertices. We really think this hands-on activity begins to solidify their understanding of solid shape attributes.
Next, we used straws and twist ties to assemble different types of pyramids. It is always challenging for students to look at the base of the pyramid and name it accurately. Again, the hands-on activity kept them engaged while they were discovering attributes of different pyramids. We made a chart of each pyramid's attributes and found patterns among the attributes.
For writing, we are beginning our In January lesson, however, we have tweaked it to In Winter. We are using this lesson to formally introduce expository writing. We used the book In November by Cynthia Rylant as our mentor text. In small groups we brainstormed different winter activities and details. In our opinion, the lead is the hardest part to write, so we wrote it together as a class, and they turned out great! We realized the leads were great because of the support we could give them while we were writing our first draft. We were able to revise and give our students things to think about, such as: Is this the best word to use? Could we add some alliteration or a simile? Does this sound right? So we changed our plans, and decided to continue to support them during the drafting of the first body paragraph. Below is the start of the writing.
We wanted to do a figurative language mini-lesson with onomatopoeia so we could add some to our expository writing. We read Slop Goes the Soup, by Pamela Edwards, and then each student made a page that was patterned after the book.
We hope you enjoyed reading this little snapshot of our week!
Kim and Anne
P.S. Here is the link to an AIMS blog that is loaded with fun Valentine's Day math activities.
No comments:
Post a Comment