Saturday, April 20, 2013

Room 8 Update

Reader's & Writer's Workshop
This week students began working on their poetry anthology.  We are balancing our time between writing new poems and publishing poems for our anthologies.  Students wrote an acrostic poem using their name.  They also wrote a poem about themselves using similes.  This poem was based on the book Quick as a Cricket by Audrey Wood.  I also read aloud Animalia by Graeme Base.  The author of this book uses alliteration on each page (i.e. "Beautiful Blue Butterflies basking by a Babbling Brook).  Students then tried writing a phrase using alliteration as well.  Then we typed our phrases and added pictures to them in computer lab.  Finally, students worked on a rough draft of an "About the Author" blurb.  It was a little tricky to write in third person, but their paragraphs turned out great!  Don't forget to mark your calendar for our Poetry Cafe...Tuesday, April 30 at 8:45 a.m.

Math Workshop
We continued our measurement unit this week.  We focused on area and perimeter.  Students often confuse these.  Perimeter measures the distance around a shape, and area measures the amount of space inside the boundary of a shape.  Students used Cheez-Its to determine the area and perimeter of various quadrangles.  Thank you Mrs. Kirchler for helping out with this project!  Students also determined the area and perimeter of large shapes created on the tile floor with masking tape.  Check out the teams working together below!




Science & Social Studies
If you haven't already, please make sure to view the short video of our classroom band below.  Students did an awesome job on their instruments and had fun playing them in class!
In social studies this week, we have focused on learning more about various service occupations.  We also placed family member's occupations into the following categories: people who make things, people who fix things, people who give us ideas, people who take care of people and pets, and other kinds of jobs.  At the end of the week partners worked together to create pantomimes of a particular job.  The rest of the class guessed which job the partners were acting out.
Don't forget your child's career project is due on Tuesday, April 23.  When your child completes the project, have him/her check the rubric on the back of the letter to make sure he/she has completed the project accurately.  Your child only needs to return the final copy.  Thank you for your help at home with this important project!

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