Reading
Dramatizing Characters and Deepening our Comprehension
As readers, students continued practicing how to get their voice right while reading and acting like the characters in their books (tone, expression). Our class was introduced to dialogue tags (said, yelled, answered) and paid attention to punctuation (end marks . ! ?) to match their voices to the story and guide their reading.
We also learned about directors. Students practiced becoming their own directors by thinking about what is important in the story and acting out the scene from the story in their mind. Before acting, we discussed what we could do with our voices, facial expressions, and body to make the character come alive.
Writing
Descriptive Writing
This week we started a new Writing unit. For the next couple of weeks we will focus on descriptive writing. Students learned that when you write a descriptive paragraph you use your five senses to create a picture in the reader's mind (taste, touch, smell, hearing, sight).
Grammar
Adjectives
During Grammar, our class learned that adjectives are words that describe or tell more about nouns. We brainstormed adjectives on a poster for our classroom, including words that tell more about how something looks (color, size, shape), tastes, sounds, smells, and feels. Learning about adjectives helped the students prepare for their writing task (descriptive writing).
Homophones
Science
Air and Weather
Investigation Focus: Exploring Air
Our class continued exploring air with parachutes at the beginning of the week with a engineering challenge. I explained an airdrop scenario and we imagined flying a plane over the forest and dropping food to firefighters in the forest. Students had to design a parachute system that could deliver food safely from the sky to the ground. We used a variety of materials: paper cup, string, tape/dot stickers, straws, napkins. After students designed and built their parachutes, we tested their parachutes by putting crackers in the cup and dropping it in the classroom. Students were encouraged to think about ways to change their designs to make them better.
We also focused on pushing air. Our focus question was, "What happens when air is pushed into a smaller space?" Students reviewed that air is matter and takes up space, then learned that air can be compressed. We used syringes (plunger, barrel) and flexible plastic tubes to create a two-syringe system and learn more about air.
Big Ideas:
- Putting air into a smaller space (compressing air) makes it push back (with air pressure)
- With one syringe, you can't push the plunger in all the way when air is trapped inside. The air pushes back on your hand.
- Plunging one syringe compresses the air and makes pressure. The air pressure pushes the other plunger out.
Science Vocabulary
pressure
compress
syringe
tube
plunder
barrel
system
Math
Numbers to 20
*Number Patterns
*Number Order
This week we focused on comparing sets and numbers.
Example:
Set A has 15 books.
Set B has 12 books.
Set A has 3 more books than Set B.
Set B has 3 fewer books than Set B.
We practiced using place value charts to help us organize tens and ones, then compared the amounts in the different sets.
Set A: 1 ten, 5 ones
Set B: 1 ten, 2 ones
Both sets have 1 ten. Look at the ones. 5 is 3 more than 2.
We also practiced making patterns and ordering numbers.
Examples:
11, 12, 13, 14, 15 (+1 each time)
12, 14, 16, 18, 20 (+2 each time)
19, 18, 17, 16, 15 (-1 each time)
17, 15, 13, 11, 9 (-2 each time)
2 more than 15 is ___.
5 less than 17 is ___.
___ is 3 more than 10.
___ is 2 less than 16.
Math Vocabulary
greatest
least
greater than
less than
more than
Have a wonderful weekend!
- Ms. Allison