Happy Fall!

FIRST GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

 We continued our study of connections this week.  Connections show relationships between objects, places, people, and ideas.  We did an activity where the students paired up words that represent connections...brother/sister, slide/playground, etc...  The students got a kick out of some examples of things that are not connected.  One student had on a watch, so we discussed that the watch is not connected to a snake (thank goodness).  We discussed how some people may have a different emotional connection with something.  I emailed parents about a homework assignment due Monday.  The badges of personal connections the students will be doing for homework will be used for a shield of connections next week.  Thank you for your support!  

SECOND GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Students finished sorting connections into the categories they created.  When they shared them with the class, it was interesting to see how they sorted and named their categories differently, yet everybody's made sense.  Although their posters varied from one another, we were able to make some generalizations about connections.  Connections show relationships between objects, people, ideas, and places.  The connections can be physical, social, emotional, or intellectual.  We brainstormed examples of the different types of connections.  There were a few profound examples I was extremely proud of them for thinking of on their own.  

THIRD GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Third grade pairs shared their posters on change with the class.  Discussing each group's poster was a nice lead in to generalizations of change.  Change can be natural or caused by humans, be random or systematic, occurs at varied rates of speed, be positive or negative, and is everywhere.  Not to be ignored is the idea that some things never change.  The past never changes, for example.  Looking ahead to the genre of myth, we had a little fun with the quote, "Aim for the stars; if you fall short, you'll land on the moon."  The students were fascinated that a classic quote has an unknown author.  The students worked in small groups to plan & present a skit on the quote.  It's great to see these students present posters/skits to their classmates.  I hope these brief public speaking opportunities help them feel more comfortable and confident speaking in front of a group.  

FOURTH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Fourth grade pairs shared their posters about change with the class.  We then used some of their examples as we generalized change.  Change can be natural or caused by humans, positive or negative, random or systematic, happens at varied rates of speed, and is everywhere.  Some things never change.  After our profound discussion on change, it was a complete shift of gears to discuss things that don't change.  The past never changes, time/calendar doesn't change (60 seconds in a minute/7 days in a week).  We also switched gears to do a brief review of nouns/verbs.  Subject nouns was our focus.  The students seem eager to explore other parts of speech.  We found that although they know some parts of speech by definition, locating them in a sentence is a challenge.  The high ability curriculum is consistent between the Duneland 4th grades.  Since they travel to Camp Goodfellow at different times, we had some extra time on our hands to have that brief subject noun review. 

FIRST GRADE MATH

Quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons were our focus this week.  The students took turns writing attributes on shape posters we have up in our classroom for reference.  I also gave them a couple tips to remember the key numbers to the shapes.  Hexagon and six both have an x as the third letter, and a hexagon has six sides/vertices/angles.  Quad means four.  A quadrilateral has four sides/vertices/angles.  I also showed them how some people look at a lowercase q and see a 4 to help them remember that quadrilaterals have four sides.  Although there are other tips I could have given them to help remember, these tips seemed most appropriate for them at that time.  They quickly realized that the shapes have the same amount of sides as they have vertices and angles.  Angles seem to be the most difficult part of the shapes to grasp, but we're on our way to building a great foundation for geometry.  We ended class with a challenge.  Name a shape that has the same amount of sides and vertices, but not the same amount of angles.  The shape is not one that we have talked about in HA.  They partnered off and tried to figure it out.  Have you thought of it yet?  If not, ask your student.

SECOND GRADE MATH

Symmetry was our focus this week.  The students learned that some shapes are not symmetrical.  They learned that symmetrical shapes may have one or more than one line of symmetry.  We folded shapes to evaluate whether or not they are symmetrical.  We used small mirrors to see if shapes reflected a symmetrical image matching the shape itself.  Before we dove into symmetry, a few students told me they'd rather work with numbers than shapes.  It seems to me they enjoyed their symmetry lessons even though it wasn't about numbers.  I assured them there are a lot of numbers in geometry, but we've got to cover the basics first.  

THIRD GRADE MATH

As last week's blog post explained, we worked with the name Sarah to begin focusing on repeated patterns.  Repeated patterns using names got personal this week.  Students used their own names to do some pre-algebraic thinking. I encouraged students to think out loud.  Our conversation took a natural turn towards division.  I went with it, and we spent some time on division.  It was a nice, brief intro to division.  If they'd like to work/play with The Name Game at home, they each have a couple blank copies.  They can also set up The Name Game (it works with any word, it doesn't need to be a name) on any paper.

FOURTH GRADE MATH

Due to Camp Goodfellow, we only met once this week.  We spent some time reviewing setting up problems in the language of algebra.  After that, we worked together to solve a couple equations.  Division was necessary, so we had a brief division lesson.  We will be differentiating between expressions and equations next week.