January 3 - 13 (Week 18 & 19)

Week 18 – 19 (January 3 – 13)

Sharing Writing to Grow (Opinion Pieces)

The kids have been thriving with creating amazing narrative pieces. So we’re attempting to steer our writing in new directions, opinion writing. We began with a few debates. Each kid chose a topic, which they had to argue, was better than fellow peer’s topic. We voted as a class which student won based on the support and voice they gave. We discussed the importance of opinion pieces, how they played a roll in our lives, and what should be included in an opinion piece to best persuade our readers.

Since then, the kids have written many opinion pieces. Such as what they would change about the class and which book they think is better. You can see check out their opinion pieces on which book they think is better (Because of Winn-Dixie or Stella by Starlight) on our bulletin board outside.

Habitats

We recently started our unit on habitat, animal, and energy transfer. We began by looking at the different habitats (biomes) that animals reside in. We’ve now begun looking at how they survive in their habitat. We will dig a bit deeper with this in order to better understand the animal adaptation, food chains, and competition.

Understanding Math

What better way to practice fluency than through exercise? With the weather being so lovely, we have been able to go outside for the very popular (within our classroom) game of Math Race! The kids are split into 2 teams. I can out a problem and the kids race (I decide if they run, hop, skip, jump, or whatever other exercise) to the white boards to write down the answer to the problem. The kids love this game and it really helps with fluency.

Now that our kids have a strong understanding of multiplication, we are moving on to area, which is directly related. We’ve began by creating rectangular shapes we have a known length and width for. For those who are ready, we’ve begun finding the area by counting the squares within the shape, and for those who are even further along we’ve began using the formula for area.