Geometry All Around Us

Today our Jumpstart had us back on bridge sentences for analogies.  We are looking at types of relationships and considered opposites, degree, functions, type, and lack.  One more week and we may have a class of analogy masters!

Our Jacob's Latter reading for today was Geometry All Around Us.  Students use the text to help them list detailed examples from the story and their own experience.  They then classified their examples and drew generalizations about the role of geometry in everyday life.

We kept on with the geometry theme as we headed to math and looked at deconstructing irregular shapes.  We rearranged our area pieces back into regular shapes and students were able to use their measurement and formula knowledge to determine the area.

We all passed our chess test with flying colors and continued our castle construction.  Most of us got a jump on our first project choice option as well.

Castle Construction

Today we began with round 2 of our Jumpstart cycle, focusing on different types of analogy relationships.  Students substituted their pairs into bridge sentences to check the relationship for consistency.
In math we continued with area where students discovered that figures with the same area can have a very different shape. They were able to find as many different ways as possible to draw an irregular shape with an area of 7 square centimeters on grid paper.  We then worked on subdividing those figures into rectangles and squares and writing number sentences using L x W to show each part's area.

For our Mindset Moment, students watched a short video where they were introduced to Mojo and his discovery about what challenges can do for his brain.
We were excited to begin part 2 of our Medieval Times project today.  Students broke  ground on our book study of Knights and Castles by Mary Pope Osborne, completed a Medieval timeline, and started construction on their lapbook castles!

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.