Classroom Update

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend, especially with this beautiful weather.

Last Week....

We began our first class read-aloud of the year. During this time we read a book together as a class. I am able to continue to model the strategies and skills we have worked on in reader's workshop so far this year and introduce new skills. Students will practice these skills in our read aloud book as well as in their current independent reading book. I can tell that all of the students are really enjoying Wonder  by RJ Palacio so far. During this book we will work on building theories about characters and well as tracking narrative story elements. Students have started using sticky notes to tag as we read to provide evidence from the text to support their theories about characters. RJ Palacio tells the story of a fifth grade boy in a very unique was by changing perspectives throughout the story. We will look closely at this unique point of view and how to helps us to develop theories about the characters.

In math we have been making good progress in Topic 3: Multiplying Whole Numbers. Students have learned about the four properties of multiplication, which we also learned can help us when solving problems. Students also learned the very important skills of multiplying by powers of 10. Next we explored the are model to find the product of two factors. This is an essential step in students understanding the procedure for the standard algorithm for multiplication. Students are also working on Xtramath.org to practice the multiplication facts. 

We also continued to revise our narrative stories by looking closely at leads and endings. First we reviewed strategies for creating good leads and endings. Then we looked closely at how you as a writer can revise the lead and ending to bring forth the meaning of the story. 

We have completed our study of the Aztec and used a mind-mapping application to organized the information we learned. We also discussed study strategies for the upcoming Ancient Civilizations test on Thursday 10/29. Students were given a study guide and encouraged to "create" a study tool.