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.