Chess Tournament

Today was a bit of a wrap-up day.  We began with students reviewing some of our morning Jumpstart topics and playing these Greek and Latin Roots review games to prepare for our Jumpstart Review Quiz.
https://www.sugarcane.com/games/greek-and-latin-prefix-matching

https://www.sugarcane.com/games/greek-and-latin-roots-matching

https://www.sugarcane.com/games/greek-and-latin-suffix-matching

Next we finished finding our body areas and spent some time reflecting on our strategies.

Our Jacob's Ladder focus today was on the literary elements, making inferences, and identifying the theme of Langston Hughes's poem "The City".

Students got to spend a little time exploring some of their passion "sparks" on Thrively, and then we finished our chess sketchbooks by filling in our information on the history and movement of the king and queen.  Students who scored a 90% or better on our chess quiz are now able to check off all parts of the first leg of our Medieval Times Project!

To celebrate a great year so far, we played a class chess tournament putting all our new skills into action!

That About Covers It

Today for our morning Jumpstart, students finished their Word Nerd comics and practiced with Greek and Latin Suffixes.  Here is a sampling of some of their clever Word Nerd comments!

• "I like booting the soccer ball into the target, but unfortunately I have no one to engage with."
• "My devious brother got in immense trouble for bawling at my mom."
• "While I was dawdling in the ruckus room I demolished my curio sedan."
• "I over dozed and did not feel like advancing to school because I was zonked."

Our Jacob's Ladder focus today turned toward poetry as students read the student published work, Artist by middle-schooler Caitlin Graham. We looked at the literary element of personification and the characteristics of the sun as an artist.  Students made inferences about why the sun can no longer paint when the autumn leave fall and they drew out the greater theme of the poem in regards to nature.  I was impressed with their insights!

For math, we continue to develop our understanding of area.  Today we reviewed by playing a dice game where students rolled for a length and width and then created their rectangle on a piece of grid paper.  The partner with the overall greatest area at the end of the activity came out victorious.  Next, students were challenged to find the area of a member of their learning club by tracing them on a pace on inch grid paper.  They had to use strategies to divide up the space, estimate, and use pieces to make wholes.

 

For our mindset moment, student used self-reflection to complete their 1st semester progress report and take time to consider their learning, attitudes, and goal set for the new year.

We wrapped up our day with our Medieval Times project and checking off our bishop box for our Chess sketchbook.

Word Nerd Adventures

Today we began by helping decode some of the Word Nerd's fancy sentences using our knowledge of Greek and Latin roots.  We then used some dressed up synonyms to write Tyler our own misadventures.

For math, we embarked on Chapter 2 and a deeper study of area.  We looked at irregular shapes and strategies for calculating the space they cover.  Students traced their fried eggs and estimated the surface area, piecing together fragments to make wholes, finding larger rectangles within the shape to use the length times width shortcut, and counting whole squares for the grand total.  Next class, we will undergo the challenge of calculating our own area!

Our Jacob's Ladder reading focus was on finishing our analysis on The Dog and His Reflection by Aesop.  Students finished their Slide presentations and were able to present their ideas on theme, inferences, and cause and effect in the story to the class.  They did a great job!  If you have a Google account have them share their work with you!

For our Mindset Moment, we read the book, The Most Magnificent Thing, by Ashley Spires and looked at a great thing coming from the pieces of many mistakes along the way.

Finally, Students got to login to our class Chess Kids account to begin moving up the ranks with lessons, videos, and online practice.  We also filled in our history and strategy for the Knight in our chess sketchbooks.

Mindset Challenge

Our morning Jumpstart today focused on Greek and Latin prefixes.  Students looked a the meanings of various prefixes and used that to build words to match a definition.  They also brainstormed words they were familiar with the contained the word part.  They did a great job building their decoding skills!

For math today, we split into work stations to review and strengthen our understanding of area and perimeter.  Students used crackers to build and calculate dimensions of ice rinks, evaluated the chess board for its area and perimeter, played some online review games, and corrected any errors on their Chapter 1 check-up from last week.

Our Jacob's Ladder story this week is The Dog and his Reflection by Aesop.  They used the story to focus on sequencing, cause and effect, and consequences and implications.  This week they used Google slides to organize and present their ideas about the story.

For our Mindset Moment, students were challenged to build a copy of a paper statue only by sight.  As they worked, we recorded their self-talk and discussed as a class how they approached the difficult task and the effect that had on the outcome.

For chess today, we had a center ring model match to help us discuss movement and strategic decision making!

Area

We began our time together with our morning Jumpstart.  Today students were using clues to morph words and build vocabulary with our Word Ladder activity.  Next, it was on to math where we had some very dedicated dog pen designers.  We were able to continue our lesson from last week to create the best space for the new pet.  Students used the ordered list from last week to select two pens to draw on their grid paper.  Once the pens were drawn, students were able to consider the two-dimensional aspect of area.  Lots of of square counting later, we had the areas of our different pens, and were able to choose the best design to give Fido the most space.  Next week we will get into a more technical understanding of area and strategies to measure it.  We finished off math with this Pac-Man review game and a team round of Kahoot to review all of our measurement concepts. Students then completed our lesson check-ups as an assessment of learning.

For our Mindset Moment, students looked at some common phrases hear in the classroom and used their knowledge of growth and fixed Mindset to sort the comments into the category they represented.  It is fun to hear the student's language start to change as they become aware of its underlying implications.

In reading today, we finished the story of Daedalus and Icarus by completing our ladder and looking at the story in terms of  literary elements, inferences, and theme.  Students were able to define relationships between characters, provide reasoning for our hero's actions, and use the text to support the main concept of freedom throughout the story.

We ended with our chess strategy session.  We reviewed and completed our sketchbook pages for the rook, and played a class demo game highlighting our new strategies of controlling the center of the board, bringing out knights and bishops, and castling.

Pet Pen Problems

Today we embarked on perimeter as part of our measurement unit.  Students worked through several stages of problem solving as they considered a pen for a new pet.  First they were given the dimensions as footsteps and found they could not recreate the pen without a more standard form of measurement.  They then used reasoning to deduce the animal to be placed in the pen.  Finally, with a perimeter of 56 feet, students were asked to make an ordered list of all the possible whole number dimensions.  They used this list to discover the pattern than an increased length results in a decreased width.  Next week we will consider the best pen design by looking at the resulting area.

Another focus of our day was on growth mindset.  Students reflected on their own mindset and got to explore some online materials that ultimately gave them their mindset temperature which they were able to record.  A lot of students are really latching on and I can already see a change in attitude when it comes to embracing challenges.  We also enjoyed a quick freeze dance game taking further encouragement from Bruno Mars. :)

For our Jacob's Ladder reading today, students considered the story of Daedalus and Icarus and examined it based on sequence, cause and effect, and consequences and implications.  Next week we will go a little deeper into theme, inferences, and literary elements.

Finally we took back up with our medieval times project and continued with the rook in our Chess sketchbooks.  Students also practiced setting up and beginning a game with opening moves.

Medieval Times Kick-off

Today was a blast!  We began with hink pinks for our morning Jumpstart.  I am hearing a lot of "this is hard" which I love!  We continue to work on building that growth mindset and changing our tone to one of enthusiasm at the challenge!  Next I introduced our new Medieval Times projects and we got in the spirit with some middle ages activities!  First students created their own helmets with aluminum foil, which took a day's share of problem solving.  There was definitely some creative design thinking at work!  Then we mounted our horses to compete in a jousting tournament.  We had some pretty impressive lance wielders!  Lastly, students created their own catapults and we worked in some math with measuring our launches!  Wrapping up the day, students did online investigations of castles, got to choose their knightly names, and began their Chess sketchbooks which will serve as the first phase of our project.  This week might be hard to top!

Our tournament champion!

Chess!

Today we looked at homophones as our Jumpstart activity.  We then finished up our math project, using estimation to create a yeti model based on the size of it's footprint.  Students were able to reflect on their strategies and process as well as make some comparisons between our body ratios and that of the yeti's.
Everyone was able to finish their strength assessments on Thrively, and then we broke out our new chess sets for their commencing games.  We have been focusing each week on a different player on the board and the moves of the game so today has been much anticipated!  We will continue to look at the history of the game and society from which it came as we learn new strategies and hone our skills!  We will work our chess knowledge into our year-long Medieval Times project we will kick off next week!

Search for the Yeti!

Today our class went on an expedition to find the illusive and mysterious Yeti.  We discovered, not the actual beast of legend, but a substantial footprint making us believe we had stumbled on it's path. With only a pencil in our pack to take measurements, we deduced that the Yeti foot was exactly two pencils long.  Our own foot being closer to a mere one pencil length, we hypothesized we could recreate the Yeti form by doubling our own body measurements.   Students groups set out to decide their tool and method and complete the task of recreating their assigned body part.  We engaged in lots of good discussion as they problem solved the most accurate methods for the job.  Next week, like any good explorer/mathematician/scientist, we will work to communicate our discovery and findings as we see if our final product proportions "measure up."

For our language arts focus, we returned to our fable of The Ant and the Dove to look at details of the story and how they help us create mental pictures of the events.  We categorized "good turns" and looked at the moral, one good turn deserves another, to see if we could find other generalizations from the text.

 

Students continue to impress me with their work on the analogy practice we have been using to Jumpstart our day.  We also finished our Thrively strength assessments and some students were able to explore some of the "spark" activities provided in their personal interest fields.

Estimation Benchmarks

We packed a lot in on our half day together.  Our morning Jumpstart focused on analogy practice.  I am really impressed with the strategies students are using to define the relationships between terms.

We finished up our first measurement lesson by estimating and measuring lengths of various body parts.  By comparing the estimates and measurements, students began to develop some helpful benchmarks for estimating the lengths of other objects in their world.  Our math focuses on written explanations of thinking.  Today students crafted their findings into paragraphs and gave each other feedback for clarifying their ideas.

We also got some initial housekeeping completed with Thrively and highlighted the pawn as an underestimated piece on the chess board.  We learned that the pawn attacks on the diagonal because the placement of his shield keeps him from striking straight ahead.  We also learned an exception to that rule that allows for a capture in passing or "en passant".