You're Invited!

Today students spent our Jumpstart time reviewing word play activities with several online games. They can continue to play at home if they choose to!  They then took a short assessment showing their knowledge of analogies, homophones, and Greek and Latin word roots.

Prefixes

Roots

Suffixes

Hink Pinks

Analogies 1

Analogies 2

We also closed out and assessed our math measurement unit.  Students showed their learning  on both our capacity study and volume of rectangular prisms.

We enjoyed a visit from author, Jane Wood, who took us through her writing process and shared some of the history she weaves into her stories.  This was perfect as the bulk of our day was spend finishing our medieval times scripts and beginning the editing process.

We are working frantically to finish as our time is getting short.  We will be excited to share our work with families on May 18th in our project showcase.  We hope you can join us!

Hear Ye! Hear Ye!

Come one and all to our first ever SPARK Medieval Times Project Showcase.

Students will display and share the castle lap books they have created throughout our research process and present their original reader’s theater scripts.

Where: Bookman Road Elementary,

Room C102

When: May 18, 2017 at 1:00 P.M.

Pentomino Puzzlers

Today's Jumpstart wrapped up our second rotation of word play.  Students built vocabulary by looking at common Greek and Latin suffixes.

In math, students rotated through stations to review finding the volume of rectangular prisms.  I have been really impressed with their work in measurement for this unit.

We began our original reader's theater scripts today.  Students chose their format, groups, and topics and began to write.  I think we are one our way to having some informative and entertaining shows!

Our mindset moment had students trying different strategies to configure their 12 pentomino pieces into a 6 x 10 grid.  I am hearing more and more positive talk as we practice responding to challenges and enjoying the processes and not just the products of learning.  They enjoyed it so much, the only groans came from the call to clean up!  For more pentomino puzzles at home they can use this link.

We wrapped up with time to work on our medieval times projects.  Students are finishing their final bits of research and completing work for their castle lap books.  I am hoping to have 12 complete books by next week!

Volume of Rectangular Prisms

Our Jumpstart today had students building vocabulary with Greek and Latin root work.  We focused on these stems:  

Root	Meaning
graph	write
act	to do or have
aud	hear
bio	life
bene	good
vac	empty

In reading students read and presented scripts detailing visits to other places in time.  They will use this format as an option when creating their own reader's theater scripts to accompany our medieval times project.

Math we were back at measurement, with today's topic being volume of rectangular solids.  They looked at the reasoning behind the formula V= L x W x H and built their own prisms to cube count, deconstruct, and measure.  We also focused on proper units with 3-dimensional measurements.

For our mindset moment, students were asked to participate in some metacognition as they considered their own learning progress and struggles so far this year in our classroom.