In reading, students have been practicing "Keeping Track of Longer Books." One of the ways they do this is to have book talks after independent reading time. The students are experts at stopping and jotting their thinking. Then they can discuss this with their peers who ask questions and facilitate a conversation that explores the key elements of plot, character traits and lessons learned.
In writing, students continue to write their opinions about the books they are reading. Now that we have dove into our study of Tomie dePaola we are living and learning life lessons through his books. We did a whole class read aloud of the chapter book 26 Fairmont Avenue , an autobiography of Tomie's life, to become familiar with how authors get ideas for their books. We discovered Tomie gets his from his life! As we read his picture books during small reading groups we made many connections to his life and saw how the characters responded to major events and challenges. As we wrap up this study, students will write three page opinion letters about why they liked one of Tomie's books. Each page suggests and supports a reason with evidence from the text. They are writing long and strong!
In Social Studies we continue to travel the continents. We made artistic representations of "tip of the iceberg" as we were learning about Antarctica while also connecting to idioms as we searched for literary language in reading. We made rain sticks while exploring South America and Monet style paintings as we left Europe! It is meaningful to connect content areas and represent learning through art and music.
In Math we are digging deep into the concept of place value representation! We use a sticker store metaphor to help. The problems presented are about children going to the store to buy stickers that are sold in groups of 10 (strips) and as one (singles). This gives students a concrete visual to scaffold their thinking about the value of multiples of tens and ones and how they can be grouped. The students have moved on to show their thinking in a list of equations that add tens and ones separately and then adds the totals together. They are also practicing representing this on a number line. All the while they continue to practice their math facts based on strategies such as double +/- one and flexibly thinking about how addition fact knowledge can help us learn subtraction facts! Keep asking us to explain out thinking!
Have a wonderful April break!