Getting our "Clues On!"We are detectives! Get your magnifying glasses! When we read, we look for clues or small details in the text that the author left behind. This is called inferring. Inferring is an important part of reading. You take what you know (schema) and add it to what you read and then come up with a new idea. We do this when we take a guess on what will happen next (predict). We do this when we try to determine a meaning of a word we don't know. Inferences helps us read deeper in the text and better understand it. Using context clues helps us to stay focused on what we are reading, and helps us figure out a word we don't know. We look at the sentence the word is in and the sentences around the word, and look for clues that will help us. Sometimes thinking about the text and what is happening helps us understand the word as well. Making Writing a Celebration!We are all unique. We think differently. That means we all start writing in our own way. Some of us need to brainstorm a bunch of ideas before we start writing. Some of us need a plan before we start writing our story, but for some of us, we just want to write. We told ourselves that it is ok whatever our approach, just as long as we write. Mrs. Snyder wants us to have a draft by the end of October. We can have a couple of different drafts by then as well. At that point, we will pick which piece of writing we want to revise, edit and go public with. We like the freedom of writing. We are writing like we never expected we could write! We talked about the importance of celebrating our writing throughout our process. We celebrated our favorite parts of our writing so far, whether it was our ideas, our first sentences, or our planning. We shared and celebrated with each other. We encouraged each other and responded to each others' writing. Mrs. Snyder took some video of us sharing, but she doesn't know how to post the video yet.
The Dot by Peter H. ReynoldsWe celebrated International Dot Day inspired by Peter H. Reynolds by first watching The Dot. The story is about a girl named Vashti who said she couldn't draw. When her teacher told her to "make a mark and see where it takes you," Vashti started to see herself as an artist.
We celebrated "Dot Day" to show that we are all super creative in our own way. The Dot encourages us to express ourselves. We all got a piece of paper and then we drew a dot of our very own. It was fun! We painted and colored. Some of us added glitter, gems and poof balls. All of our dots were different. It means that we are all unique. In the afternoon, we visited other classrooms to do Dot Activities. In Mrs. Reimann's room, we made dedication dots to dedicate to a person who has inspired or challenged us. The dots looked like squares until we cut them out to look like circles. After we cut them out and wrote our dedications, we gave them to Mrs. Reimann to hang up. In Ms. Jackson's class we drew pictures combining math, dots and graphic art. It was hard at first, but once you got the hang of it, it was rally fun! We had two choices. We could draw dots an connect them or we had to make a shape and draw circles in it. We got to use graph paper and got to take some home. When we went to Mrs. Davis' class, we spent our time adding decimals so they became whole numbers. We placed chips on a chart numbered to 100 and made a picture. We also did logic link puzzles. We graphed our favorite book genres using dots as well. In Mrs. Snyder's class, we "dotted our I's." Peter H. Reynolds wants the world to become a more creative place. We did our part by celebrating the specialness we have been gifted with. Every I is unique because I is you! Every individual has their very own character traits, personality, talents and values. We reflected on what makes us special and unique and why it is so important to recognize this in ourselves. We are the only one who can be us on earth! We wrote about our special gifts on a colorful dot to celebrate us! All of our dots are hanging in the Hilliard Crossing Hallway! We are a class of readers! We love to read and sometimes we have trouble finding a good book. There are lots of books and every book has a genre and every genre has unique characteristics. We explored the genres fantasy, poetry, science fiction, realistic fiction, historical fiction, mystery, informational, biography, autobiography, memoir, and traditional literature. Learning about the genres will help us discover the perfect book for us. Now we can find books more purposefully. In room 7, we conducted an experiment around the age-old question, "How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop?" After we received our tootsie pops, we used our senses to make observations and then formed a hypothesis. A hypothesis is a scientific/educated guess based on what we know and observe. Next, we proceded to plan our experiment. Most of us took a lick of the tootsie pop and then recorded our data using tally marks. A lot of us had tired and sore tongues at the end of our test, but we never gave up! The next day we compared our data, and it was crazy! Our results were all over the place. Our minimum was 570 licks and our maximum was 5,010 licks. As you can see, the range was too large. There were too many variables, which are factors that affect experiments. We discovered we all had different definitions of what a lick was, and what the center of the tootsie pop was to begin with. Due to the many variables that were not controlled, the question still stands, unanswered. The world may never know how many licks it takes!
We are so excited to share our learning journey with you. Here we are working on our first blog! |