We had a fun week in HA!

First Grade Language Arts

In first grade language arts, we began exploring the concept of connections.  We started by observing/discussing illustrations connecting with words in a book.  There are obvious physical connections, there are connections that aren't visible, there are endless connections.  The students have a brief homework assignment to find four connections in their home.  If you haven't already read it, I emailed first grade language arts parents about the assignment due Monday.  The students were successful finding many connections here in our classroom, so I'm confident finding four connections at home will be a breeze and hopefully create interesting conversations. The fun part will be sharing them, discussing, and making even more connections with the topics they bring from home. 

Second Grade Language Arts

Second grade language arts is also exploring connections.  We began our study of connections by sorting a variety of connections (for example: slide/playground, mother/daughter, sad/crying) into groups and naming categories.  It's interesting to see how the students divide them differently and name categories differently.  As you can see in the pictures, the students are working on individual papers/posters.  The pictures do not capture the students' interesting dialogue. The students seemed to enjoy hearing how each other interpreted and categorized the connections differently.   

Third & Fourth Grade Language Arts

Both third and fourth grades began discussing change.  We brainstormed examples of things that change.  Many things in nature change.  Weather changes.  Our moods and feelings change.  Some things change naturally, but humans also create change.  Then the students worked in pairs to create a poster on change.  They first had to come up with twenty examples of things that change.  When I asked them to divide their twenty examples of change into groups, they became a bit indecisive.  Although each example of change is unique, the similarities are plentiful.  Putting their examples into just a few groups proved challenging, because many examples can overlap categories.  We will finish this activity next week and continue contemplating change.

First Grade Math

When I first told the students we are going to be learning about triangles, I think they were unimpressed.  Once we began discussing the attributes of triangles, they were intrigued.  When I asked them to get down on the floor to make angles with their bodies, they were all in for geometry!  We sat on the floor with our legs in front of us and bent at the hips to create acute, right, and obtuse angles.  Our hips were our vertices.  Our bodies made up the angles.  The students' interest is perked up.  I'm looking forward to dissecting more shapes with them!

Second Grade Math

Second grade also began geometry by investigating triangles.  The second graders also enjoyed the physical study of angles by getting down on the floor and creating acute, right, and obtuse angles.  A right angle is 90 degrees, an acute angle is less than 90, and an obtuse angle is more than 90.  Our hips were our vertices.  Vertex is singular, vertices is plural.  We thoroughly discussed the attributes of triangles.  It was a great introductory lesson to our study of geometry.  We also began digging into writing in math.  Putting our thoughts into words to explain/support our answers is a skill we will be working on throughout the year.  We used a think frame to organize our thoughts on triangles.  We will use think frames repeatedly to help us organize our thoughts/supports/explanations.   

Third Grade Math

This week we started working on a foundation for algebra.  Our current focus is repeating patterns.  Learning to look for and work with a pattern will help students make predictions and generalizations about the continuation of a sequence.  We worked with the name SARAH and its repeated pattern.  If you wrote the name SARAH x amount of times, how many letters would you write?  If you wrote SARAH 100 times, what would the 87th letter be?  If you wrote SARAH 175 times, how many times would the letter A be written?  We will continue working with names and repeated patterns next week.

Fourth Grade Math

Fourth grade math students finished their pre-assessments.  Our district has anxiously been awaiting the delivery of our 4th grade algebra curriculum.  It finally arrived, so we will begin that soon.  In the meantime, I've been supplementing with Zaccaro algebra.  I've talked to the students about the language of algebra.  We've been reading problems and setting them up in the language of algebra.