Another Fun Filled Halloween at CCS-thank you for all your donations for our class party!
We kicked off our Rock unit this week.
Our first question: what happens when you rub two rocks together?
Next, what happens when rocks are placed in water?
We experimented with basalt, tuff and scoria. They all come from volcanoes!
Lastly, we sorted river rocks...
A student suggested we place them in water to wash off some of the sandy dust that was on them and look what happened!
We started a unit on maps by watching a video with Mrs. Filardi's class.
Later in the week, students partnered up to read map books and answer questions about each book.
Our mentor text for our Nonfiction Reading Unit is:
We studied just the castle page for two days asking ourselves-what do we notice, what is this teaching us?
We noticed moats, walls, small windows, knights in armor...this taught us that castles were designed to protect the people inside.
Next we studied various types of nonfiction text and diagrams.
We shared what we noticed and what we learned.
The next day we looked at the castle page again but this time we also asked questions about what we were seeing....why did they need so much protection in castles? Do villagers live inside the castle walls?
Then they returned to their nonfiction items and tried the same thing.
Now we were finally ready to start to read our mentor text. We read the title page and the first page constantly thinking... what do I notice? What am I learning? What do I wonder?
Now, students chose a Gail Gibbons book to read on their own. They studied the front and back covers- just like we did with our mentor text-and shared their thinking.
Now we were ready to start reading the books. Just like we do not eat too much Halloween candy at once or we will get a tummy ache, we need to read nonfiction slowly and savor it or we will get a brain ache!
We stopped frequently and shared our thinking....
Some of the synthesizing of big ideas that readers shared out after about 10 minutes reading their books...
Whales: "animals change over time to survive easier in their habitat."
Deserts: "nature can weather rocks to make deserts."
Pyramids: " Scary things were put in pyramids to scare people and protect the treasures."
Great thinking!!
Mrs. Filardi's class taught us how to log onto Chromebooks.
Students then visited Brainpop Jr and learned more about maps or rocks.
During math this week we began by measuring beans. On Wednesday, Mrs. Filardi and I co-taught a math lesson as part of our ongoing math professional development to both classes. Primary teachers, special educators and math interventionists sat in on the class. The students did an amazing job! They exhibited the math habits of mind and interaction that we strive for-persevering, using mathematical representation, listening to understand, asking questions..I could go on and on! We were very proud of how well the two classes worked together:)
Later in the week, children were introduced to an open number line. This is a tool mathematicians use to represent the mental math they do in their heads when adding double digit numbers. The students have very efficient and precise strategies. We also use a number tree to show how we break apart numbers to make adding easier. We do not introduce the traditional algorithm in first and second grade. The work they are doing using these open number lines and number trees builds the foundation skills they need first.
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| Notice how breaking apart the 16 into 10 and 6, this mathematician can easily start by adding 10 to 38. . By further breaking up the 6 into 4 and 2, they can first get to the nearest decade by adding 2 (48 + 2= 50) and then it is easy to add 4 more( 50 + 4= 54). |
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| I pointed out to this student that they could have shown this by starting at 60 and jumping a plus 10 since that is the work they did in their head and showed in their number tree or starting at 40 adding 20 and then 10-so many possibilities! |
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| This mathematician used what they know about "make ten facts" to solve this by counting by tens. |
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| Student work was placed under the document camera and other students came up to "read" the math thinking-they did awesome! |
More practice...
They checked each others work by comparing answers and strategies.
Up next our new read aloud...
