We can hardly believe it is time for winter break. Where has the first part of the year gone?
Last week we made adorable sock snowmen. This week we wrote an explanatory piece giving directions on how to make them. For some reason the kids were super focused and wrote for over an hour! It was probably because they loved the little snowmen so much. They even wanted to include their writing as part of their gift to their parents. It was nice to end the week with such quality work.
Yes, we know the border is upside down, but this student's writing was so well done we wanted to show-case it. Also, this is only page one.
Another fun activity we did this week involved synonyms and antonyms. The kids made synonym-antonym word strings. Each group of students was given a bag filled with six words. They then had to arrange them according to their degree with the strongest opposites at the top and bottom. Before they could arrange them, they had to look up the definitions to determine where to place them.
In computer lab, we continued having fun with words. We used the program Tagxedo to create word art with synonyms or antonyms.
Our last activity of the week was making pine cone reindeer. To solidify the idea of following directions, we had the kids how to make the reindeer. If they followed the directions they ended up with an adorable reindeer!
It is hard to believe that there is only one week of school left before winter break. There is so much to get done in these last few days! One thing we did finish was our Simple Machine Unit! We spent a little more than a trimester on this unit, but it was well worth it.
We thought what better way to wrap up this unit than to have our students become the teachers! Lately, we have spent much time focusing on main idea and important details with our kids. It can be challenging to find the main idea, and even more challenging to weed out the interesting details from the details that are most important to the main idea. Students really have to think critically about the text, which we think is so important. The students' task as teachers was going to focus on this skill.
Before we sent them off on their task, we once again addressed main idea and details in our shared reading. Together, we read the one page text, What Are Simple Machines? We had to find the main idea of the entire text, not just one paragraph. It was a little tricky, because the main idea really was in the second paragraph. After identifying the main idea sentence, we charted important details, and interesting details.
Then it was time for the students to switch roles in cooperative groups! Each group was assigned a different simple machine. First, they had to follow directions to make a quick three-dimensional paper model of their machine.
Once they finished making their model, they moved on to reading a one page text about their machine. Their job was to read the text, identify the main idea, important details, and interesting details and create a chart about their simple machine. They would use this chart to teach the class about it. We were amazed with how hard they worked to dig deeper into the text to find the main idea. One group inferred a main idea that was much better than the one we had come up with! They also had great conversations about which details were the important ones.
After practicing their presentations, it was time to teach! The kids had a blast teaching to the class, and listening to the other presentations. It was a huge success!
During this unit, we visited two websites about simple machines during our computer lab time. One was a BBC website, and the other was Edheads. We thought you might like to check them out!
On another note, we found a super cute snowman craft online that the students made this week. This craft is going to serve two purposes for us- it will be our kids' parent gift and it will be used as a springboard for a writing activity that we will share next week!
This week we did a follow-up activity to our synonym lesson from last week. Trader Joe had the cutest little evergreen trees that were covered in sparkly glitter. We bought a bunch of them and used them to to write descriptive poems. They were frame poems that used only adjectives and nouns. We reviewed the fact that most synonyms are adjectives, so when the kids wrote their poems they needed to use at least two synonyms from our previous lesson. Our students had a great time playing with words, and we felt great about expanding their vocabulary. You can link to our frame draft here and our final copy here.
In math, one of our groups had fun with multiplication using the book Each Orange Had Eight Slices: A Counting Book by Paul Giganti, Jr. As it was read aloud, the students had to record and solve the multiplication equations for each page. Then they had to write their own multiplication story problems following the same format as the story. It was challenging, but they got the hang of it. Doing activities like this, as well as Engage New York lessons, have allowed our students to have a deeper conceptual understanding of multiplication and division.
Once again we were pulled out of our classrooms for a math committee meeting, but all was not lost. We got ahold of a great new resource that will help us as we plan lessons that develop deeper conceptual understandings of math concepts. The resource is called ISBE Model Math Curriculum. We are really excited with the direction our district is going in math. We are excited to continue planning lessons that will meet the needs of our kids.
Hi everyone! Sorry we were off last week. Our trimester was ending, and we had to get grades and report cards ready.
One of the fun things that we did in word block this week focused on synonyms. It was a springboard from an activity that one of our colleagues gave us. Students had to find synonyms for the word small. We loved the synonym choices because they included words that students were not familiar with. It required them to look up each word in the dictionary and determine if it meant small or not. It wasn't easy, and they often had to draw conclusions to make their decision.
The next part of this word block activity involved helping students use the synonyms correctly. The synonyms for small and big are used in different situations, and we wanted students to practice using them correctly. We separated their uses in their reading notebooks, and they could refer back to their notebooks when engaging in the next activity.
It was then time to practice using these new words in sentences. The kids really did a great job, and everyone used them correctly. This was important for us because in the past when students have used a thesaurus to choose a synonym, they don't choose appropriate ones for their writing. You can click on this google link to get a sentence template for this activity.
The girl who created this synonym page told me she is not finished with the picture. I apologize. I'll replace this picture with the completed one as soon as she finishes.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving! We have conferences at the beginning of next week, and then hope to have some time to relax with our families!
Once again it was a short week for us. Kim had committee meetings on Thursday and Friday, and Anne was out on Friday. Needless to say, we find ourselves once again in the middle of things!
One activity that we did complete was our word block/grammar lesson on conjunctions and compound sentences. We began by asking the students, "What is a conjunction?" None of them knew, but they quickly caught on while we were reading the book, If You Were a Conjunction by Nancy Loewen. After enjoying reading about the many ways conjunctions are used, we introduced the students to compound sentences, and how conjunctions can be used to connect two individual sentences. The students were then given a bag of sentences and conjunctions. They had to match the sentences, select the appropriate conjunction, and make new compound sentences.
The next day, we gave the students random pictures from the internet. They worked in partners to generate compound sentences about their picture. It was a little more challenging than we had anticipated, but everyone did a great job! These two activities were simple, and relatively quick, but really helped our students solidify their understanding of conjunctions and compound sentences. Hopefully, they will carry this into their writing, as we encourage them to not only use simple sentences, but also use compound and more complex sentences as well.
We also worked more on our narrative writing. As we were reading through some of the students' original narrative stories, we noticed most of them were not adding enough details to develop them. So, we once again looked to the Smekens website for guidance. We found two websites that have student anchor papers. We decided this would be the most effective and efficient way to help show our students how developed narratives look and sound. We highlighted and annotated the anchor papers so we could use the techniques we found in our own stories.
We not only focused on details and development, we also worked on making sure our narratives had appropriate and interesting transition words and phrases. We discussed the fact that one of the elements of narrative writing is moving the story along in chronological order, and that it is important to let the reader know when you are moving a long in time. We decided to keep a list of transition words in our writing notebooks for quick reference.
One last thing we want to mention is an App that many of you may have heard of before, but Kim just learned about it at her committee meeting yesterday. It's called Chatter Pix. Kids take pictures of objects, draw a mouth on the object, and then record their voices. When the clip is played back it looks as if the object is talking. Oodles of activities could be created that involve kids using this App to demonstrate knowledge and understanding. The first thing Kim is going to do is have her math students write and solve a multiplication problem that involves drawing arrays. The students will need to explain what the array is showing. They may want to draw a character and make it talk, or they may want to have a pencil do the talking, or most likely they will find some other object to do the talking. This will be a fun way for students to demonstrate their knowledge of what the factors in a multiplication problem mean. While this is low on Webb's Depth of Knowledge chart, knowing this information is critical to their success in future math concepts.
Here is a YouTube video explaining how to use Chatter Pix. So easy!
We hope you have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne
Friday, October 31, 2014
Happy Halloween! Luckily we are not in class with the kids right now because we know they'd be bouncing off the walls, and we would get nothing accomplished. Unfortunately, we are at an Institute Day which seems long even though we get out two hours early. During our breaks we will take the opportunity to type this blog.
Our Force and Motion unit in science continued this week. We really feel that with all the hands-on activities our students are really internalizing the concept of forces and the vocabulary that is needed for understanding it. After exploring forces with commercial tops, our students designed their own tops using everyday items. This was a good activity to have the students really think about what makes a top work. Surprisingly, after all the exploring they did with tops most groups were not successful in creating a top that could spin for 10 seconds. The positive thing that came out of this lesson was the fact that the kids had to figure out why their top didn't work. This led to great conversations, and most of them were spot on.
Many of our kids stated that one reason their top did not spin was because their top was too heavy. So, the second part of our top designs addressed how weight affected how long a top spins. In fact, that was our question to them--"How does weight affect how long a top spins?" Of course many of them hypothesized that their top would not spin at all or it would spin slowly and for a short time. It was fun for them to discover the exact opposite of their hypotheses happened.
As we reflected on the results of this activity, we were able to introduce the students to the term momentum. We then wanted to see how well students could reflect on their learning throughout these top activities. They did a great job incorporating their understandings of the science concepts to what actually happened with the tops, and they had a lot of fun doing it!
Next week we will be moving on to the concept of gravity, and we will have a Flying Cup Experiment to share with you. We can't wait because it has been a big hit in the past, and it has been awhile since we have taught it!
Have a great weekend!
Kim and Anne
Friday, October 24, 2014
Friday, October 24, 2014
Anne and I are going out for a much needed "Girls Night Out" with our teacher friends. We will be back on line next Friday with lots of fun things to share with you about spinning tops and our Force and Motion science unit.
