Happy Holidays, HA families!!!

 FIRST GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

We continued with anagrams this week.  Most of the students were greatly challenged by this.  I encouraged the students to persevere.  After our talk about the importance of perseverance, the students put forth great effort:) The students worked individually, in pairs, and in small groups.  They had letter tiles available to them to help manipulate the letters into different words. 

SECOND GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

 While watching The Tale of Despereaux, the students continued working on their character trait activities.  We discussed how the movie varied greatly from the book.  For the character trait assignment, students solely referenced the character as he was in the book.  We finished the movie, and the students finished their character trait activity!  We had a fun and productive time together this week:)

THIRD GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

  Up until this week, all of our examples of folklore have been very old stories.  On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior.  With the tragic loss of 29 crew members, a modern legend was born.  I read a poem to the students, we listened to a song by Gordon Lightfoot, and we watched part of a documentary on the Edmund Fitzgerald.  After a discussion on color, mood, and tone, the students created interpretive drawings of the modern legend.  You may click here for the documentary SS Edmund Fitzgerald Documentary  Here's another link that may interest  you/your student https://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/

FOURTH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

We continued the timeline portion of our biography project.  As I mentioned last week, the timeline requires a lot of organization and collaboration.  The students continue to make me proud.  They worked together to edit the timeline.  Once they completed that, they started transferring the timeline onto large butcher paper.  This step of the timeline requires planning, organization, and collaboration.  It also requires patience, because some students may not be able to do their portions until after other students have completed their parts.  I'm very pleased with their attitudes toward each other and the project.

FIRST GRADE MATH

Making observations and sorting objects based on their properties forms the basis of much of math.  It is especially important in geometry.  Recognizing and understanding properties of shapes is more important than learning names for them.  Our lesson this week involved sorting by attributes.  We sorted people and shapes by their attributes.  In the first picture, the two students in the ‘circle’ are both in Miss Plinovich’s class.  In the second picture, all the students are first graders in HA math.  In the third picture, the two students both have on green shirts.  In the last picture, both the students are boys.  I did not get pictures of them sorting shapes by their attributes.  At first, they worked in pairs to sort shapes by their attributes.  At the end of class, we worked as a whole group taking turns sorting shapes by their attributes.  

SECOND GRADE MATH

Is a square a rectangle? Yes!  Is a rectangle a square? No! Vertices, angles, polygons, parallelograms, and closed plane figures, oh my! As you might guess, we discussed plane shape attributes and definitions.  I emphasized the shape attributes versus just visually knowing a shape's name by sight.  After the plane shapes review, I introduced prisms.  The students enjoyed working in pairs to build prisms out of straws and pipe cleaners.  It was quite challenging and required teamwork.  While the students were working, we discussed some similarities and differences between plane shapes and prisms.  It was a nice introduction to prisms.  

THIRD GRADE MATH

As you may recall, the students recently worked with a 700's chart to explore arrays and find mathematical patterns.  This week, the students created puzzles for a 300's chart.  They had creative and mathematical freedom.  Some students chose to create their puzzles solely based on mathematical patterns.  Some students created their puzzles based on visual design.  Regardless of their inspiration, creating the puzzles required a good sense of mathematical patterns.  Each student will be given a copy of all the puzzles to solve.  A couple of students made their keys (solutions) already.  The student mathematicians are enjoying being teachers by creating worksheets for their HA classmates.

FOURTH GRADE MATH

We took a little break from algebra this week.  We strained our brains with a logic puzzle.  It is said that logic puzzles exercise parts of the brain that may not be stimulated otherwise.  Logic puzzles boost brain activity and require systematic, critical thinking.  The students and I definitely felt the burn of a good workout.  I apologize for not getting a pic this week.  

Making it a December to remember:)

FIRST GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Leonardo da Vinci often wrote his ideas and plans using mirror writing.  Nobody knows for sure why, but many believe it was to keep his notes private.  The first grade HA students used a mirror to decipher a magical message.  After that, I introduced anagrams.  Anagrams are not only fun and interesting, but also help students develop and apply spelling, phonological, and vocabulary skills.  Anagrams utilize higher-level thinking skills. We read a super fun and silly book filled with anagrams called The Great Show and Tell Disaster.  The students made some personal (self to text) connections to the book.  Being it's such a silly book, they got a kick out of the connections they made.  Here are some anagrams we discussed this week:  dad/add, wolf/flow, bread/beard, Kristen/stinker, Brian/brain, mood/doom, aunt/tuna, peas/apes, shoe/hose, cat/act, melons/lemons, and limes/smile.  

SECOND GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

As you know, we finished reading The Tale of Despereaux last week.  We also chose Despereaux as the focus of our character trait activity.  This week, we started watching the movie (2008, rated G) and working on our character trait activity.  We are multitasking to make good use of the little time we have left before break. 

THIRD GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Due to testing and absences, we had a few students missing from HA here and there this week.  So I intend to touch on this week's lessons again next week.  We reviewed nouns, verbs, pronouns, and prepositions this week.  Every time we touch on parts of speech, the students head into the lessons with great confidence.  This week, we read a couple passages and identified the nouns, verbs, pronouns, and prepositions.  The students quickly realized it was more difficult than they anticipated.  Our lesson naturally led to discussion on adverbs and adjectives, but the students were not required to identify them.  We also finished watching the Rumpelstiltskin video from last week.  This week, we didn't discuss what makes Rumpelstiltskin a fairy tale (we did last week).  After the video was over, we discussed change.  The life of the ordinary girl becoming a princess was one example of change.  Rumpelstiltskin started off as a helpful/seemingly good character, but he changed into a sinister/evil character.  The picture below shows the students picking out vinyl stickers.  It's sweet how excited they get over stickers.  

FOURTH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Our Anne Frank biography project has moved on to the preparation of the timeline.  We are noting ten events that are significant to Anne's life.  The timeline template is in Google Sheets.  The students told me they hadn't used Google Sheets before.  I have no doubt they will use Google Sheets at some point in their future, so this is a nice introduction.   The students put their heads together to decide which events are/aren't significant for the timeline.  They put the events in chronological order and entered them on their iPads.  This portion of our biography project takes a lot of organization and collaboration.  They are handling this beautifully.  As I told them, I'm proud of them.  This will continue into next week.

FIRST GRADE MATH

This week's lesson focused on vertices and angles, because those shape properties can be difficult for young mathematicians to differentiate between.  I started by creating large shapes out of masking tape.  I used marker to mark the vertices on half the shapes and mark the angles on the other half of the shapes.  We used our fingers to dab the vertices, so they'd feel vertices are points.  We used our fingers to follow the angles, so they'd feel the turn of the angles.  This hands on experience helped them feel the difference between vertices and angles.  Using straws and pipe cleaners, the students each made their own angle finders.  They aren't quite ready for protractors, so these homemade tools are just right.  We went on an angle hunt around the building.  The students found angles in a variety of objects. They used their tools to help determine if the angles were acute, right, or obtuse.  We also sat on the floor with our legs straight out in front of us like we had done earlier in the year.  We made right angles by sitting perfectly upright.  When we leaned forward, we made acute angles.  We made obtuse angles by leaning back.  While standing, we used our arms to make a goal post, two right angles.  From the right angle goal post position, we touched our heads to make acute angles.  Going wider than a goal post, we made obtuse angles.  I know I don't usually go into such detail, but this great math lesson deserved extra attention.  The students had so much fun:)  

We did not have 2nd, 3rd, or 4th grade math this week.

It's the most wonderful time of the year:)

FIRST GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Back in 1877, Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, invented a word game called Word Links.  It was later called Doublets, and is now called Word Ladders.  It requires phonological awareness, word recognition, spelling, and vocabulary skills.  It utilizes higher-level thinking skills.  By changing just one letter in a word at a time, a word transitions into another word.  For example, we can change the word car to run by changing one letter at a time.  Car to can.  Can to ran.  Ran to run.  We can change the word lake to wave.  Lake to wake.  Wake to wave.  We can change thank to thing.  Thank to think.  Think to thing.  The students found this challenging.  We worked as a group and independently on word ladders.  

SECOND GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

After answering some questions to refresh our memories and reviewing our light and dark chart, we finished The Tale of Despereaux in class this week!!!  As I often feel when I finish a good book, I’m sad it’s over.  Although we are done reading the book, we are not done with lessons related to the book:) Next week, we will be doing a character activity with text evidence.  We took a vote, and our character activity will be on Despereaux.

THIRD GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, third grade HA language arts students focused on the often enchanted type of folklore known as fairy tale.  They updated their folklore posters to include fairy tales.  We also worked on our venn diagram to show the similarities and differences between the types of folklore we have talked about thus far.  Some students had time to skim through a book containing fairy tales that aren't as well known by the students.  Rumpelstiltskin is a fairy tale that most of the students weren't familiar with, so we watched part of a Rumpelstiltskin video.  As we watched the video, we paused to discuss the definition of fairy tale and pointed out the aspects of Rumpelstiltskin that make it a fairy tale.  

FOURTH GRADE LANGUAGE ARTS

We are still in the research phase of our Anne Frank biography project.  The students have started having more profound questions/thoughts about Anne Frank and the world at that time.  I have been encouraging them to take more detailed notes and read some of Anne Frank's diary.  Please ask your student what he/she has learned about Anne Frank.  You might also ask him/her what he/she thinks/feels about the life Anne lived.  

FIRST GRADE MATH

The students completed a "check up" assessment.  They did really well on it:)  They will take it home next Wednesday, if you'd like to keep your eyes out for it.  We worked on a couple challenging story problems.  We worked on locating and highlighting key words in the problems.  The story problems have two steps, so they are more involved than the students are accustomed to.  The problems require writing down the answers in numbers and writing a sentence in words, so it is an exercise in writing words in math.  

SECOND GRADE MATH 

The students completed a "check up" assessment.  Your student will take it home next Wednesday, if you'd like to look for it.  They did really well on it:)  We had a mini lesson on subtraction: regrouping with/across zeros.  There are a couple of students that have mastered/nearly mastered regrouping with zeros.  For those students, it was a lesson in showing all their work.  I always stress the importance of good habits in math.  It was also a productive mini lesson for all the students.    

THIRD GRADE MATH

Understanding the patterns in an array is a more efficient way to identify missing numbers than counting.  When the students first saw this week's lesson involved a 700s chart, they thought it was going to be easy peasy.  In second grade, they learned to find missing numbers in a hundreds chart puzzle.  The students quickly realized the 700s chart puzzle is a challenge.  The students worked to find missing numbers in a 700s chart without looking at a chart.  After that challenge, we moved on to another sort of challenge.  Long division.  We had a mini lesson on long division.  It isn't actually part of the 3rd grade HA curriculum, but the students want to learn it.  I love that these students long to learn long division.  I'm so lucky to work with students that crave challenges!

FOURTH GRADE MATH

The students completed a "check up" assessment.  I'm so proud of them, they did excellent on the assessment!  Your student took theirs home, so you might ask to see it.  We spent some time reading story problems, interpreting the problems, and setting them up in the language of algebra.  We have done this before, but with simpler problems.  It was a challenging lesson.