Interviews and Summarizing!

Thank you to everyone who had time to come down to interviews this week! It was great to touch base with everyone and let you know the inner workings of our classroom and discuss goals!

This week we have been working with Summarizing; I can find, organize and retell important facts or story elements from the text. To introduce this strategy, we had a couple students come up and talk for 2 whole minutes about an activity they had done over the weekend. Then, turning to the class, one student had to retell their classmates story in 3 sentences. Using our Determining Importance strategy, we were able to figure out what the important parts were and highlight them.


To summarize a story, I read the students a personal favourite - "Mom, Can I Have a Stegasaurus, Can I Please?". Once we read this story we discussed the format of retelling using, "Somebody...Wanted...But...So...Then...". This helps us remember the story elements and provides us with the language for retelling orally and sentence starters when writing. We can use this to summarize the end of a chapter as well, to review what has happened.

To practice this skill, students worked in small groups to read books and summarize them first orally and then into a graphic organizer.

 
 

We have also spent some time talking about complete sentences and how they need both a subject and predicate. The subject is the WHO or WHAT the sentence is about and the predicate is WHAT the subject is doing. Predicates will usually contain the action and uses verbs.

Using visuals, we had one student pick a subject and a second decide what that subject is doing. When we listen to just one students our sentence is not complete and doesn't make sense (i.e. A small blue bird) and they need their fellow students with the action(i.e. is eating raw pumpkin seeds) to complete  them so they may be pronounced "Sentence". Students went on to create their own sentences and identify the simple(bird; eating) and complete(A blue bird; eating raw pumpkin seeds)subject and predicates.

In Math, we worked on review in patterns and then completed our patterns test! Every did a pretty good job and I will be going over them with the class Monday and sending them home to be signed and with corrections.

In Social, we introduced the Alberta Regions project the students will be completing in groups for this unit. Each group will be responsible for creating their own slideshow about their region and teaching it to the class. We are continuing to work through our reading and chapters as a class.

We also had some time to make some pretty and SPOOKY art! Students worked with tempura paint and added white to tint their base colour and create a beautiful back drop for a haunted house!

This afternoon they will take some times writing FOR SALE ads for their spooky houses!

Making Connections!

This week our reading focus has been Making Connections: I can connect what I have read to other text, to myself and the world. When making connections, we relate a piece of the story or entire story to an experience we have felt, read or heard about in the world. We use worlds like "This reminds me of..." or "I can relate to this because.."

We started out with finding connections, text to self. I read the class Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. A book where everything just seems to go wrong. Then the students completed a double journal entry, choosing a section from the book that they had experienced or could relate to.
Next we connected text to text, by reading Goldilocks and the Three Dinosaurs. This book reminded us of a couple other stories, but mainly, the original Goldilocks. As a class, we chose an example from the book that we could relate to the original story.

Finally, we read Something Beautiful- a story of a girl who is from a low income area and is looking for something beautiful. As she goes around her neighbourhood she learns what every person finds beautiful and that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We could relate this to other ideas we know in our world and how not everyone has the same living situation.


In Math, we are almost done patterns! We will be having our unit test on Monday and doing some review activities at the end of this week.
We are now able to identify if a pattern is increasing or decreasing, describe attributes, identify pattern rules, extend a pattern with a rule and translate patterns into T tables.

In Social, we have begun to read about the 6 Natural Regions of Alberta. Students read descriptions of the regions, compared them and located them on a map of Alberta. Using visualization, in small groups students read about the regions and drew pictures of what they imagined they might look like. We also used Quizlet this week to practice our social terms! Quizlet is an interactive vocab stusying guide where students can work off vocabulary lists I have made or create their own list and play games.

In Science we have been working with pulleys and demonstrating how they work! Using the monkey bars on our playground, we used a simple pulley to lift a chair off the ground. Depending where we attached the pulley really made a difference in our effort needed!
When we attach the pulley to a fixed location (like the monkey bar) and try to lift the chair it felt about the same in effort. However, when we moved the pulley to be attached to the load and anchored our rope on the other side our effort was reduced by half! Then we used a pulley to send a bucket from side to side.

Inferences and Predictions!

Our reading strategy focus this week was Inferring: I can use clues from the text to make inferences and predictions. First we had to determine the meaning and difference between predicting and inferring. When we predict we are thinking about what will happen next. When we are inferring we are using the clues to deice how a character feels, where they could be or what they are doing in that moment.

To introduce this concept we read Train to Somewhere, a story about orphans in the early 1900's travelling west to be adopted. We used our inferring skills to read the text and decide who the young girl was looking for, where they were in the U.S and how the main character felt about being adopted. 

Next we looked at pictures and practiced inferring and predicting. Using clues in the images we inferred setting and emotions. In small groups students had their own image and made predictions and inferences and then shared them with other groups. 

 

We also discussed the 4 types of sentences, Declarative, Exclamatory, Imperative and Interrogative. 

In pairs students made flipbooks with the description of the sentence type and then searched for them in Mo Willems Piggy & Elephant books. 

 

In Math, we are nearing the end of our patterns unit! This week we worked with identifying a pattern rule, extending a pattern based on a rule and using T tables to solve pattern problems. 

In Social, we have begun to discuss the land of Alberta's story and the different landscapes across our province. We read descriptions of six different landscapes and did an "Around the Room" exercise where students answered questions based on the locations. 

Each group had a colour assigned to them and everyone rotated answering the questions. 

A Few Reminders: 

- Camp Warwa Parent Information Night is Next Thursday. 

- Fruit orders are due next Friday. 

- Parent/Teacher Nights are Tuesday October 25th, and Wednesday October 26th. You can book your appointments online.