Week at a Glance
We are excited to be back from Spring Break and start digging in to 4th quarter. Our work this quarter will be centered around exploring the essential question "What is the relationship between the producer and the consumer?" Students will be utilizing the communication literacy toolkit, relating the producer to an author, and the consumer to an audience.
Stay tuned for how this work unfolds. Below is a snapshot of what students worked on this week. I think you'll be amazed at how much ground our educators cover!
Kindergarten
Communication Literacy
Reading - sounding out words in context, using books as resources to inform writing, reviewing how to do silent reading with the whole school
Word study - short a rhyming patterns with increasing fluency, short e and i practice, finding word pattern words in stories, word study games
Writing - Reflecting on spring break, journal writing, response to literature writing
Read aloud!
Patterns and Modeling
Introduction to Geometry
Proving a shape (dressed as shape ninjas)
Practicing addition and subtraction using manipulatives to support Mathemateer on the iPad
Place value game
Theme
Art focusing on light - stained glass shapes and animals and solar printing
A photograph tour of Brie's home to spark conversation about light (shadows, refraction, reflection, rainbows, etc)
Studio (grade 1-2)
Communication Literacy
1. Book Groups.
-Fluency and intonation
-Vocabulary
-Rhyme
-Making predictions based on evidence
-Making connections (text-to-self, text-to-text, text-to-world)
2. Spring Break Writing.
-Taking a piece of writing through the rough draft, editing, final draft process
-Capitalization and proper nouns
-Punctuation (period, exclamation point, question mark, comma)
-Adding details to a sentence
-How can you be more specific?
-Can you add an adjective or choose another verb?
-Who? What? Where? When? Why?
3. Creating a story using Scribble Press.
-Reviewing beginning, middle, end of a story
-Creating a main character
Patterns and Modeling
1. Reviewing scales.
-What is a scale?
-Reviewing descriptive and numeric scales
-Comparing scales to number lines
2. Brainstorming and rating places on their own scales.
Theme Time
1. Watching videos from third quarter.
-What is collaboration? How did your group collaborate in order to solve your problem?
-Taking turns
-Listening to each other
-Assigning roles
-Sharing ideas and combining ideas
-Collaborative games.
2. Fourth Quarter Kick-Off- Watching Top Chef Jr. Restaurant Wars and introducing challenge.
3. What makes a good experience? Sharing favorite experiences.
4. Discussing the essential question: What is the relationship between producers and consumers?
-Defining the terms "producer" and "consumer" and connecting those terms to the roles of author and audience.
-How can we produce an experience?
Studio (grade 3)
Communication Literacy
1. Book groups
- fluency and intonation
- making predictions
- identifying foreshadowing
2. Typing Club
3. Reviewing the parts of speech while playing Apples to Apples
4. Introduction to Biography Unit and Expository Writing
- defining "biography" and "autobiography"
- making observations about the differences between fiction and non-fiction
- asking the question "Why study biographies?" and discussing how biographies are not about memorizing facts
Patterns & Modeling
1. Estimating sums and differences to nearest 10s place
- reviewing the terms "rounding" and "estimation"
- observing when estimation and rounding are useful outside of school
- using estimation and rounding to quickly add and subtract 2 digit and 3 digit numbers
2. Building place value and examining parts of a whole using Minecraft with the Clubhouse group
Theme Time
1. Quarter 4 theme kick-off: Cereal Companies
- discussing the essential question: What is the relationship between producers and consumers?
- defining the terms "producer" and "consumer" and connecting those terms to the roles of author and audience
- reflecting on collaboration during the Quarter 3 exhibition project
- identifying our own strengths and preferences when working in groups
Misc
1. Preparing for Minefaire with practice run-throughs of presentations
2. Body Systems: an introduction to the immune system
3. Field Trip to the Morgan Wixon Theater to watch the student-led play "Curious George"
Clubhouse group (3-5 grade)
Communications Literacy
-Big group discussion about City of Ember (Author's purpose, how character's relate to events in the story, identifying problems in the story, and predictions on how those problems will be solved).
-Made connections between City of Ember's power outages, as problems with the city's generators increase, to real life problems we have faced with power outages in the United States. We watched a video and discussed the large scale power outage in 2003 and read an article from a first person perspective discussing Puerto Rico's current situation with lack of power after hurricane Irma and Maria.
-In book groups students continued reading City of Ember. In rotations students used their observations from Tuesday to write, "I Survived a Blackout". Students had a choice to write an informative, narrative, or persuasive paragraph. Students could be as creative in their stories as they wished, however we discussed the importance of using factual evidence as well as proper paragraph structure. Students will then peer edit, and write or type a final draft.
Patterns and Modeling
(Jim) - Preparation for Minefaire. This was also done Friday during Communications Literacy and P&M.
Theme
-Clubhouse and Paige's group discussed group work from the last quarter. What was important and helpful in your groups last quarter? What helped you be successful? What was challenging? How did you overcome those challenges? What are your strengths and why is knowing them helpful in a group? Students completed worksheet about what their strengths are and what helps them learn.
-Wednesday the Clubhouse and Paige's group kicked off the theme for the final quarter by playing a game of Jeopardy about several cereals marketed to kids. Questions included names of cereal mascots, slogans, description of cereal, and colors of cereal boxes. At the end of the game the group discussed how the game related to what we will be creating for our final quarters exhibition. Students were informed they would be creating cereal companies and presenting their ideas and creations to parents as well as a professional panel at the end of the quarter.
-On Friday as a large group we discussed important terminology that relates to our big picture question, "What is the relationship between producers and consumers?" Students discussed the meanings of producers and consumers and identified different examples of each. Afterwards students identified what important jobs might be in a cereal company. Based on their strengths they wrote down at the beginning of the week, students chose what roles might best suit them in a cereal company (for their small groups).
-Next week we will begin to focus on the term marketing, what that means and looks like, and how cereal companies market to children. We will begin collecting data and making observations Monday when we take our field trip to Ralph's.
