Monolouges

Today's Jumpstart had us back at studying Greek prefixes as a tool for decoding and extending vocabulary.  Students looked at the prefixes sub, mono, pre, tri, and re.

In math we enjoyed this cute video to get us in the mood for customary capacity conversion. Students then worked in groups on our party planning challenge problem.  With the prompt of serving two cups of lemonade to each of their 36 guests, they came up with as many ways as possible to show 72 cups with different combinations of units.  They used the actual tools to measure and pour, proving their answers to the class.

Monologues was the theme of the day for reading.  Students continued with their Reader's Theater practice and focused on solo performances using expression to highlight the feelings of their character.  We took a trip to the library for students to choose a short read aloud to practice for the class.  A monologue from the perspective of a medieval character will be one of their choices when creating their own scripts for our projects in the coming weeks.

We wrapped up our series on "the Dip" with persisting through some critical thinking toothpick puzzles.

Coat of Arms

Our Jumpstart today was a classic word scramble.  Students used their prior knowledge together with some decoding skills to uncover our mystery vegetables.

Our time was short, but we were hard at work on our medieval times projects.  Students continued their investigation of knights, armor, and weapons.  They then chose symbols of heraldry to represent themselves on the battlefield.  They also choose between writing their own minstrel song or creating an advertisement for the medieval equipment they studied.

We watched the video "Austin's Butterfly" and looked at how feedback and drafting can be a great way to make improvements on work.  Check out our progress from the first to final drafts!

To Tell the Truth

We did more word play for our morning Jumpstart!  Students are getting better and better at persisting for longer amounts of time in their word creation.  Today they used letter from Checkmate to build their lists.

We were back at it with our reader's theater practice today.  Teams practiced different "To Tell The Truth" scripts and presented them to the class.  We are focused on fluency and projection and also learned some interesting facts about Harriet Tubman, Lewis and Clark, and J.K. Rowling!  Students may select this format when creating a script of their own for our medieval times project later in the year.

We stayed with the game show theme and played a group round of Dunk Tank to kick off our volume measurement in math.  Students had some impressive background knowledge that will help us jump further into converting with customary units.

For our mindset moment, we referred back to our discussion of "The Dip" and looked at reflecting on mistakes as a helpful strategies for moving forward.  Students then submitted their ideas for activities we could do in class to help us practice overcoming the dip.

We made progress on our medieval times projects by wrapping up the fair or festival invitations we began last week as we studied castle life and celebrations.  This week we also began to look at the popular topic of knights, armor, and weapons.