Good afternoon everyone!

Here is a mixture of photos and paragraphs of our week.

Social Studies: China Study

We finished up our posters last week on Friday, but we were able to revisit China one last time on Monday thanks to the Dengs. This gave us a chance to do some first-hand research with our stomachs, which is my favorite way to learn!

The Dengs brought us some (from right to left) Fried Rice, pork wantons, fried vegetarian spring rolls, and some fortune cookies. 

 Everyone loved the chance to get our stomachs involved in the research, learning about a new style of food.

As we walked around the room, we noticed that the fried rice was a hit. Everyone dug right in and loved it.

It was great to see that everyone was trying something new and applying a lot of the language we have been learning over the last month about what it means to be 'normal'. 

Math

We wrapped up our inquiry into analogue clocks this week. Mr. Hass and I were surprised with how quickly everyone was able to grasp telling time on an analogue clocks considering most have only ever really looked at digital clocks. But, with some steady practice, everyone made great strides.

We began the week with looking closely at the smaller tick marks on the clocks. We learned what "quarter to/of" means, and played around with quarter hours before moving on to telling up to closest five minutes. Using this knowledge as a foundation, we solved some more day-in-the-life-of-Mr. Hass and -Mr. Smith problems. We drew times on the clocks and worked on solving for duration as well.

We then moved on to solving word problems that asked us to think a little more deeply about time moving forward and backward. We solved  problems that had us moving past the hour mark. For example, if Mr. Hass left class at 6:45 and arrive home 20 minutes later, what Time did he arrive home? These types of problems had students thinking about how the minute and hour hands work together to display the time, a real challenging task which they were quiet capable of doing.

The final task this week was working on a rather difficult set of story problems. Everyone worked together to build some math communication skills, which we are planning to revisit more and more over the coming weeks. We are trying to build on the ability to communicate strategies like mathematicians instead of simply sharing results to problems. This is something that does not come easily and requires a lot of practice, so I'm excited for the possibilities this will bring in our classroom.

Writing - Countries and Cursive

After working hard to research information about our countries last week, we began to put it all together this week. On Monday, our focus was on writing good introductions that would invite the reader to learn about our countries instead of just listing a bunch of facts. We looked at mentor texts about Afghanistan, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Indonesia for ways to introduce our country books. We noticed that these books started with sentences that described the country, dared the reader to read the book, bragged about an aspect of  the country, or invited the reader to learn about the country. With these ideas in mind, we then set out to write our own introductions.

The next day, we began to organize all the information we collected into groups which became the subheadings on each page in our books. Headings and subheadings were a few of the non-fiction text features we had studied a few weeks back which we were eager to add to our own writing. With our information all organized, we set off to writing down our facts as rough drafts for our books. Instead of just writing down a list of facts, though, we added in topic sentences to prepare the reader for the topic of the page and ease them into the facts. These topic sentences worked to give the readers of our books a sense of what the page will be about and what types of things the reader might learn.

We finished up the week on two high notes. First, we finished off the final lowercase cursive letter. To our surprise, many of the students were sad to hear we had finished all the cursive letters. The improvement of focus and hand-writing in general was terrific. We were happy with how well everyone was able to independently slow down and focus on the slightest curves for each letter.

The beginning touches on all our country books was the other high note. We added cover pages, table of contents, and headers to each page. Everyone also got a chance to search out a map and 3 additional pictures for their books which gave them a chance to better understand some of the information they had researched. Everyone also got a chance to see their country's flag, drawing it on the back of their book. It was really surprising to see the range in complexity between different flags. Some flags turned out to be really simple while others had really ornate designs all over them. Regardless of complexity, though, the illustrated versions on the books turned out great.

Next week, we will put the finishing touches on our books, adding in all the text features from before.

Reading - Skylark

This week we did a shared reading of Skylark by Patricia MacLachlan. This book is the second part of the Sarah Plain and Tall series we read in the Fall. While reading we really began to draw out our thinking by talking about each of the characters. We really tried to not only come up with ideas but also reasons and justifications for our ideas during our discussions. This gave our discussions about the book much more depth and significance, giving us the chance to make connections to the previous book, solid predictions about what might happen next, and insights into the story that might have otherwise been more difficult. Mr. Hass and I were both pleasantly surprised with how successful and capable everyone was with coming up with thoughtful comments that used proof from the book for support.

During silent reading, we are trying to go back and reinforce positive reading behaviors. We want everyone to be able to sit and focus on reading during silent reading time in order to really dive into their books. On Friday, we started using reading logs to get a better understanding of how much reading we are really getting done and also to keep track of books we finish or maybe set aside without finishing. This will give us the chance to be self-reflective and set goals which we can monitor together as a class to establish reading behaviors that put us in the best position to succeed.