To celebrate Presidents' Day, our class read about Abraham Lincoln and how he had not always had a beard. He grew one after a young girl named Grace wrote him a letter to tell him he wold look better with a beard. He tried it and then won the election! One students said they are going to write a letter to Mr. Ebert and ask him to grow a beard! Students researched and learned about Washington and Lincoln.
Our essential question for the week was How are kids around the world different? Our first story of the week was about the Chinese New Year. A child celebrated both the American and Chinese New Year which have similarities and differences. Both holidays include fireworks and time with family. Students made red lanterns with Chinese characters to remember the end of the 15 day celebration is the lantern festival. Our skill for the week which we have been working on for the last few weeks was comparing and contrasting. In addition to Venn Diagrams, students used table and t charts to practice the skill. We learned that comparing and contrasting is all across the curriculum including math, science & social studies! Our grammar skill for the week was irregular verbs in the past tense.There was a lot of writing happening this week! Students were working on monthly paragraphs and writing a research paragraph on the individual they were for the Wax Museum. I will share these with you at conferences on the 6th and 7th. We also started Opinion writing.
Students took the Topic 9 assessment on Tuesday and did GREAT! We jumped right into Topic 10 which is adding to 1,000. Our strategies for this week were + 10, +100 and an open number line. Students have seen these strategies from back in topics 3 and 4 when we learned 2-digit addition. This is a quick unit as we will be done at the end of next week. I'll let you know about the assessment after we get a few more lessons in.
Our stories for the week allowed us to incorporate some of our social studies culture standards. Also, we are introducing our Force & Motion unit in science. We had stories early this year that gave us knowledge about gravity, push & pull and friction. We will be going to the ALPL on Wednesday, March 6th from 9 to 10:15. Please make sure students are not tardy this day as we will leave right after the bell rings. If you would like to join us, we would love to have you! Please email me if you will ride the bus with us or just meet us there.
Next week is Read Across America week so we will be doing different reading activities throughout the week. Next Friday, March 1st (!) is Wear A Word Day as students can wear a shirt with writing on it. If you have not yet signed up for conferences, click HERE.
Short week but had a lot to do! Have a good weekend,
Marissa Wilhelm
