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.

Tower Power

Today's Jumpstart had us solving riddles with our one syllable rhyming hink pinks.  We also did a quick word building challenge looking at strategies for morphing the words we had already though of to build our list and persisting in our thinking even when we thought we had found all the possible words.  Today's high score was 16 words made out of the letters in AREA & PERIMETER.

We finished our chapter 2 area study with a check-up quiz.  Students showed off their abilities to define, estimate and calculate area of both regular and irregular shapes.

Next we used all six of the SPARK C's to complete the Castle Tower Challenge!  Students practiced collaboration to work in their group using pipe cleaners to build the tallest structure.  They used their content knowledge of castle building job and design features. They persisted in setbacks of one armed laborers, a loss of supplies and barriers to their communication. Their creative and critical thinking help them design these beauties!

We had fun with our first reader's theater experience.  We divvied up parts and read "How Does it Feel to Live Next Door to a Giraffe".  Students practiced fluency and oral expression as well as evaluating the script for themes and coming up with a zoo design to help the animals show more tolerance for one another.

Carpet Caper

Our morning Jumpstart today focused on homophone riddles.  See how well you do!

A penny perfume________  ________.

Forbidden group of musicians  ________  _________.

A stallion with a sore throat ________  _________.

A frog pulled by a chain ________  _________.

To compose correctly ________  _________.

A chess horse after dark ________  _________.

For math we brushed up on our area and perimeter skills with three station rotations. At station 1, students worked with me to measure and calculate the area of our classroom with our Carpet Caper.  At station 2, they played an area and perimeter quiz game and were able to self-check for accuracy.  At the third station, several computer activities helped them gain fluency in solving for perimeter and area.

Our mindset moment today involved reading the book Beautiful Oops by Barney Saltzberg.  The book shows how spills, tears, and mistakes can be creatively turned into works of art.  Student got to try their own hand at using something that might look like a flaw and turning it into an original picture of their own.

For our project work today, we read about protecting the castle and learned new vocabulary to understand the parts and structures involved in caste defense.  Students then chose to make their own labeled castle diagrams or create a matching game using their new vocabulary.

The Dip

Today we finished our second round of analogy Jumpstarts for our morning warm-up.

We touched back on finding the area of irregular shapes in math.  Students are getting more comfortable with subdividing and using their formula to calculate square units.  They did really well on our challenge problem and finding lengths based on other given measurements.

A big part of our day was spent playing some logic and persistence games.  We watched a video about a student experiencing "the dip" or a struggle in their learning journey.  We discussed ways to overcome "the dip" and viewing it as a natural part of learning.  To simulate a dip we worked on the surprisingly hard four piece T puzzle and reflected on our feelings as we struggled to try different strategies and find the correct configuration.  We also challenged ourselves with the Set puzzle and a round of Mastermind.

Students finished up their work on the Chapters 1 & 2 pieces of their medieval times projects.  Next time we will be looking at protecting the castle and castle life.

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!