Week Sixteen

The students presented their culminating projects in P.B.L. this week to share everything they learned about being good citizens. Their essential question was, “What can I do to be a good citizen?” Each student helped to develop an art, drama, or technology project that explained the concepts they learned while studying this topic. The class presented their projects to a room of at least 50 people! I was impressed with how much they have learned about the ways citizens help their community and I can’t wait to watch them apply what these important lessons in their lives! 

The “drama group” discussed ways that citizens can help others and wrote a play to explain their ideas!

The “art group” created posters and works of art to show ways they can make their community beautiful. They also recycled and reused materials to create new works of art which made less waste! 

  

The technology group discussed ways to get along with other citizens in their community. They created a virtual puppet show to share their ideas!

 

Reading

This week the students learned about folktales. We read How the Chipmunk got his Stripes and discussed the life lessons in the story- don’t brag or tease! We have been focusing on understanding why characters do and say things. The students are doing a nice job making inferences and drawing conclusions about our read aloud chapter book and they are working on doing the same things when reading independently. This week we also studied verbs by acting out them out! The students are encouraged to use a lot of descriptive verbs in their writing! Next week, we will read a nonfiction text on jellyfish and hunt for facts and opinions. We will study contractions, like wouldn’t and I’ll, as well as the suffixes “er” and “est.” 

Here are some of our readers hunting for life lessons in folktales:

Spelling

The students worked on spelling words with the “ch” and “th” sounds. Next week, the students will work on words with the consonant blends “fr” and “bl.” Below the students are practicing their spelling words using sign language! 

Writing

This week the students learned how to start their writing “with a bang!” We studied the different leads that writers used in their books to grab our attention and then we wrote some practice beginnings to try and make our leads as interesting as the examples! The students did a great job using dialogue, onomatopoeia (sounds like boom, crash, and riiiiiiiing!), questions, vivid descriptions, and more to begin their writing in an interesting way. From now on, the students should begin their pieces in a way that makes their reader want to keep reading!  

Vocabulary

We reviewed our first two vocabulary units this week and learned about synonyms and antonyms. Next week the students will work on the words: Beach, center, finally, idea, ocean, seashell, stack, tiny, wave, and wonder.

Math

The students worked on finding “ballpark estimates” this week by rounding numbers to the closet ten or five. This is such a helpful skill when you want to quickly get a close estimate of a cost or measurement. For example, if you are shopping at the grocery store and you’re buying items that cost $23 and $39 you can do a quick ballpark estimate: 23 is close to 20 and 39 is close to 40, so I’m going to spend about $60. Being able to quickly estimate answers also helps the students check their work and see if their solutions make sense! We also practiced two digit addition and measurement this week.

Here are some of our mathematicians working with partners to practice two digit addition: