A short, but busy week!

April is National Poetry Month! Throughout the month we will be reading and writing various forms of poetry.  This week we read acrostic poetry, discussing and recognizing the pattern, flow of ideas, and word choice involved in the poems.  During Writer's Workshop, the students developed acrostic poems for the word "kite."  They used exciting verbs and descriptive adjectives related to kites and spring in their poems.  These poems became the tails on the kites the students created during art.  We used markers to create a 3D optical illusion on the kites.  The kites and poems turned out great!

During our read aloud time this week we focused on using text features of expository, or non-fiction books.  Non-fiction texts contain information that is true. They also contain features such as titles, headings and subheadings, captions, maps, diagrams, charts and graphs, legends, bold and italicized text, glossaries, indexes, and cutaways. These features are a common part of non-fiction reading that we often use or reference to help gain understanding of what is being read. As experienced readers, we do this without notice. When students read nonfiction material, they will also encounter text features that are different from those they come across when reading fiction.  

Our first reader's theatre group performed "Piggie Pie" by Margie Palatini.  They did such a great job reading with expression and fluency.  The audience was thoroughly entertained by their performance!

Math

The students were so excited to start our Multiplication Unit this week.  I introduced the unit by reading "The Best of Times" by Greg Tang.

The Best of Times gives kids an intuitive understanding of multiplication, encouraging them to arrive at answers on their own rather than memorizing the times tables. A child who can multiply by two, for instance, can multiply by four and even eight! Likewise, times six builds on times two and times three.

The first lesson in our unit focused on teaching the students to think about multiplication when attempting to add "equal" groups.  In addition to using repeated addition to calculate the total number of dots below (3+3+3+3+3), we can use multiplication.  The following can be thought of in terms of:

5 groups of 3 or 5 x 3 = 15

The students enjoyed playing with the dot cards to create multiplication sentences for their team.

Science

This week in science we focused on testing the strength of difference methods of joining.  The first challenge the students faced was to answer the testable question "Will straw cubes, joined with different connectors, support the same mass?"  The connectors used to answer this question were paper clips, pipe cleaners and plasticine.  The students concluded that cubes joined with plasticine where stronger and held more mass that those made with paper clips or pipe cleaners.

 Social Studies

This week the students continued their jot notes on Ukraine.  The students learned about the different services provided in the city as compared to a village.

Congratulations to Zaina Lal for receiving the Student of the Week award during assembly on Friday!