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.