Monday, January 28th, 2013

Good afternoon!

This week's IA: Art
Next week's IA: Music

Reader's Workshop
Currently, we are paying attention to how readers infer while reading. We are reading many poems and using our background knowledge along with the text clues, to infer, or guess, what the author really means. We've discovered how much fun it can be to be detectives while reading these poems that use such great word choice. Here's an example of one of the poems we read today:
From the book, If Not for the Cat
By: Jack Prelutsky
Boneless, translucent,
We undulate, undulate,
Gelatinously.
We had to use our background knowledge and the text clues to figure out that the poem was talking about jellyfish. We also had to discuss the vocabulary of this poem. We learned the meaning of translucent and undulate.

Writer's Workshop
Since we are spending so much time reading poetry, we are trying our hands at writing poetry. Our main focus for poetry is to include descriptive words that really paint vivid pictures in our readers' minds. We have started the publishing process for our poems. Some children are choosing to publish by hand while others are choosing to publish their poems on their Kidblog sites. We will share our poetry with you at are Student Led Conferences coming up in March. Just wait until you see how descriptive our writing has become!

Math

Last week, we began using Khan Academy as a way to practice our math. The kids have been super motivated to use this tool! I hope this will help the students practice their basic math facts as well, as I've noticed that not knowing these facts has made the tougher addition and subtraction problems even harder.

Are those Legos? Yes. What do they have to do with math? Let me tell you. Today, we began learning about multiplication. We used Legos to help us begin thinking about this concept. I introduced arrays. We will be using arrays to help us visualize multiplication. Legos are perfect examples of arrays. Arrays are anything that have equal amounts of objects in a certain number of rows. So, the top Lego is an array that has 4 rows with 6 dots in each row. This is a 4x6 array and has 24 total dots. 4x6=24. The bottom Lego (same Lego turned the other way) has 6 rows with 4 dots in each row. This is a 6x4 array. 6x4=24. If you have Legos at home, this would be a great way to practice multiplication.

Expedition
As we are wrapping up our Community Expedition, we are beginning to work on our final product, community poems. We are writing poems that show all we know about community. We will perform these poems for you at a special Poetry Reading Night on Thursday, February 7th at 6pm. This will be held in our classroom and all families are invited. The students will also create a visual presentation to go along with their poetry, which we will show that evening as well. Be on the look out for a Sign-Up Genius for this night. I like to make it a very special night with hot chocolate and treats for the kids.