Language Arts
We began our new Unit: La vida silvestre en la ciudad. We started with a great story: El niño que no creía en la primavera. This is a story about two friends who live in the city and are searching for signs of spring. One little boy doesn’t believe that these ‘signs’ of spring really exist. Through exploration they eventually do find signs in the city.
Here are a few of the skills we focused on this week:
- Identifying dialog in literature (-rayos- are used in Spanish while “quotations” are used in English)
- Identifying adverbs of time and order
- Cursive writing of our spelling words
- Reading aloud with fluency and expression
Spelling/ ortografia(words with soft g and j – Test on Tuesday)
corregir – to correct gente – people
general – general bilogía – biology
lógico – logical urgente – urgent
adjetiv0 – adjective eje – axle
paje – paige boy mensajero – messenger
juegos – games pájaros – birds
dijo – said abajo – under
anteojos – glasses
Using our Halloween candy to form groups and makes arrays was a fun introduction to our Multiplication unit.
Math
We have jumped into our Multiplication unit this week. The big idea of this unit is to develop an understanding of multiplication, the distributive property and related pictorial representations, as well as learn the multiplication facts. This week students were re-introduced to area models as well as arrays. It is imperative to spend extra time going back to revisit concepts and strategies for x3, x4, x5 and x6.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFITX7HQ7j0?list=PLIfm15g-bybouyGpIacKjuWAr__8NIUKx]
Social Studies
Caesar is no longer just the name of a salad, This week we have been learning all about Julius Caesar. We found out that he was born into one of the most influential patrician families in Ancient Rome, the Julii family . We learned that he was going to be a priest for Jupiter until a family feud put him on a path towards the military and later on to a political career. We learned that he earned a Civic Crown for bravery in the army, that after the war he made an alliance with a very rich and influential man named Pompey, that he eventually became a powerful consul in Rome, and that he wrote his own autobiographies. We also learned of his ambition as a proconsul to expand Roman territories and conquer Gallic and Germanic land ( present day France and central and northern Europe).
This week the class has also continued reading their mini books on Ancient Rome and writing notes on the main ideas of each chapter and supporting details. I have been pleased to see that everyone’s note taking ability has improved over the short period of time that we have been working on it.
Science/Writing
Our domain on Classification of Animals is over and we have finished our Animal paragraphs this week as well. The students were taught a 5 step process to get these published. Part of this process included planning, drafting, revising, editing, and having someone else read it for flow and comprehension before publishing. What a difference one year can make! Last year this process would have taken us twice as long and I would have been much more involved in each paper. This time around, almost everyone worked independently with very little input from me. They did a great job! You can see these on our bulletin board.
On Thursday we began our next Domain on Light and Sound. We started off by watching Bill Nye’s video on Light and Color. After watching the movie the class filled out a worksheet that helped them identify their prior knowledge that was confirmed in the video and also new things that they learned. We then began reading about what Light is. On Friday we did a couple of experiments to 
observe shadows.
English Spelling
The class has been surprising me by getting most of their spelling activities done over the weekend. This is great, but I want to encourage everyone to continue to practice their spelling sorts in class and at home through out the week so that they are ready for the spelling test on Friday. Next week we will not have a spelling test, I will be working on reading and spelling assessments in class in order to get ready for our up coming conferences. Students will be doing seat work and silent reading during our spelling time. This is a great opportunity for them to bring in a longer chapter book that they may be reading at home.
Art
The 2nd and 3rd graders learned how to create depth in a still life painting by overlapping shapes. We reviewed the background, middle ground, and foreground of landscape paintings and then looked at the placement of objects in Cezanne’s still life paintings. The students created their own beautiful still life of fall fruits and vegetables using oil pastel and watercolor.