April 1 - 5 th

Welcome Back!

I hope everyone had a wonderful, relaxing Spring Break! I can't believe that it's already April.  Where has the time gone?

After recharging over Spring Break, the students were ready to get back at it. Following is a quick look at our week.

Writing Workshop

We began a new writing project this week to celebrate Spring. 

 I read the book "Everything Spring" by Jill Esbaum. This book uses stunning photography and detailed imagery to capture the uplifting spirit of Spring. When we think of Spring we feel warmer, sunny days, we smell the freshness of nature's flowers blooming again, and we picture little chicks and furry bunnies. These adorable baby animals are fun to look at and they represent the spirit of renewal and life that is spring. Every young creature finally ventures outside to play as the dreary days of winter fade away and color surround us all. Spring is about being outdoors enjoying all that our wonderful planet has to offer; it's about living life to the fullest.

Using "Everything Spring" as a mentor text, the student's were asked to use their five senses to write a poem about spring. The students were asked to use similes and elaborative detail to describe what Spring looks like, feels like, sounds like, tastes like, and smells like.

After completing the graphic organizer to write their poems, the students typed them on the Chromebooks. Each line of their poem will become ribbons on the tail of a kite that the students will be making in art.

Reading Workshop

During Read Workshop we worked on Finding Text Evidence and Making Inferences. 

The students read "The Lost Chick" three times, checking off a box after each time the passage was read. There were 3 text evidence questions where the students used crayons to underline where the answers were found in the text. There was one inference question that was not directly answered in the passage. The students needed to use the clues from the text to make an educated guess. The students also had to respond to a question that helped with text to self connections.

Word Work

This week we began Interactive Notebooks to focus on grammar and spelling patterns. The notebooks will serve as an “anchor” for the outcomes taught, as well, as a reference that your students refer back to. The two language skills covered this week were Capitalization and Nouns. 

Back and Forth

I would like to thank all of the parents, grandparents, family members, and friends who have taken the time to respond the the students' Back and Forth Journals. The students are always so excited to read your responses in their journals.

Handwriting

We have almost completed the entire alphabet in handwriting. This week we focused on the letters L, E, and N. The students were also so excited to start handwriting their agenda notes. They are doing an amazing job. I think that their handwriting is neater that their printing in many cases!

Math

The students continue to enjoy working through our Division unit. This week we focused on:

- sharing items equally, or dividing, when given either the number of sets or the number of objects in each set. 

- interpreting the divisor in a division sentence as either the number of sets or the number of objects in each set.

-solving division word problems that provide two pieces of information: the total number of items being divided and either the number of groups or the number in each group.  

Social Studies

We began our study of Ukraine this week. I taught the students how to take sketch notes as a way of jotting ideas down from the textbook.

Sketch notes are purposeful doodling while listening to something interesting. Sketch notes don't require high drawing skills, but do require a skill to visually synthesize and summarize via shapes, connectors, and text. Sketch notes are as much a method of note taking as they are a form of creative expression.

The students will be using their sketch notes to create a whole class google slide presentation on Ukraine.

Art

During art the students created an optical illusion on paper kites using markers. We started our lesson by examining a colour wheel and discussing complimentary colours. I had students choose two complimentary colours for this project. To get started the students had to locate the centre of the page and divide their kite into 12 sections. Then they had to draw "happy face" and "sad face" curved lines in alternate sections. The students coloured these sections with markers, alternating one coloured and one blank space. The kites were finished off with some crayon shading and outlining with a sharpie. The acrostic poems written during Writer's Workshop became the ribbons on the kites.

Completed kites with the poem, attached to the tail, will be on display next week. Please feel free to come by to take a look.

Congratulations to our Student of the Week!