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.