Language Arts
- Ideas:Does your poem have the purpose of entertaining or explaining?
- Organization:Is your poem organized in a manner to make it easy to read and understand?
- Did you use words that rhyme at the end of the verses?
- Word Selection:Did you choose the best words to express your thoughts and feelings?
- Sentence Flow: Do your sentences flow?
- Voice: Does your poem communicate your feelings?
Some students were able to type their poems in class while others did not have time. All students should bring their typed poem (size 20 font) to school on Monday with an illustration on the bottom half of their paper.
In grammar this week we focused on noun, adjective, article agreement in number and gender. We also learned that adding a suffix to a word changes the word. Suffixes are added to the end of the words. The students thought it was great fun to select the correct words and to edit a paragraph. They are such enthusiastic students!
Math
This week we worked on using multiplication and division within 100 to solve real-world word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays, and measurement quantities. We used bar models to solve two-step division word problems.
During our small group math lessons I stressed to the students the importance of knowing when to apply your math knowledge. We need to understand how and when our math skills are necessary. Sometimes a solution to a problem might seem very easy. Other times it might seem really complicated and we will need to draw out the problem. Bar models are not mean to be used with every type of problem, only those where a visual representation is helpful.
The math packet is due this coming Friday.
Social Studies
This week we finished our Norsemen studies. On Monday we watched a short Viking film on what a village may have looked like and on Tuesday we took our Viking assessment. Everyone did great on the map and multiple choice portion of the test which we graded in class. I will be correcting the short answers over the weekend. We worked on our puppet show skits and filmed some on Friday. The rest will be done on Monday. The class also typed up the letters home to Norway from the perspective of one of our characters in our read aloud. These are on display in the hall. On Friday we all got to go to the Kid’s BBC site and do some of the Viking activities as a final end of the unit activity.
Science
We have started our next domain on Astronomy. We read about eclipses and the different ways the earth rotates. The class is super excited about this unit, they already have a wealth of prior knowledge that they are bringing to this unit. On Feb. 8 we will be going on a field trip to Aladdin Theater in Portland to see the Bodyology show. This relates to our Human Body Domain that is being covered by Ms. Leane during health. We will meet directly there at 9:45. As usual, families should arrange their own transportation.
Our class is also participating in a service learning project with the Children Center of Vancouver. Thank you Laura McBride for bringing this project idea to our class. We will be collecting stuffed animals, 12″ or larger, to be filled with aquatic rocks and used as therapy toys for children with sensory disorders. We are looking for donations of stuffed animals and aquatic rocks, both new and unused. Later in the year we will also be needing volunteers who are willing to do a small amount of sewing on these items.
English Spelling/Writing
The class had their spelling test on Friday, everyone did wonderful. The new 15 pt. goal for sort activities seems to be the magic number, all homework was turned in last week. For grammar review we worked on suffixes and prefixes, taking a closer look at how these additions change the meaning of the root word. We will continue to work on these next week as well. We did not do very much journal writing due to the fact that we were writing quite a bit in our content areas. It was a very busy week.
A Week’s Review by Maddie
In social studies Bjorn and Toli are on a knarr ship and they have been traveling for 14 days and when they got to Iceland it was green and the mountains had snow on them. The one who greeted them was their uncle. He showed them around. Bjorn and Toli had sea legs, they were just getting use to the ground again. Bjorn and Toli’s uncle asked if they were hungry but Bjorn did not want anymore fish. We learned the saying “Rule the Roost”, it means when someone rules your house and it is also from a chicken who rules the roost. In science we had our light and sound projects. We enjoyed that. Last week was very fun, we did some fun stuff!
Art
In 2nd-3rd grade art, we continued our weaving theme by making a variety of paper weavings. The students learned how to create different paper looms using diagonal lines, curvy lines, zig-zags, etc. It was fun to watch the students working! We displayed everyone’s work on the whiteboard, and we saw how the patterns in the weavings created optical illusions of movement and depth. Check out these weavings on the bulletin board by the boys restroom.