Gym Class....The New Math Class?

Today in gym class, Mr. Z had the students play a game where they were split up onto four different teams. Each team was designated a specific color. The object was for each team to take turns running to the middle of the gym and grabbing one disc according to their team's color. Once that team member returned to his/her team, they revealed what number was on the disc. Once all ten discs were brought back to the team, they were to put them in number order 1-10. The first team to have all their discs in the correct order wins! It is such a neat thing to see when games in gym class are being combined with skills we have been working on during our math time.  

Poem 11-18-2011

I Have, You Have

Our poem this week had our sight word "have" in it four times! A few of the students got into the the reading pattern "I have a ____, You have a _____" that when the words changed to "I like to _____" they had to back up and reread to make sure they were reading the correct words. This is a strategy I have not introduced yet, but was excited to see some of the students using it and not even realize it!

Daily 5 During Severe Weather?

Yesterday, we had a little bit of a scare with severe weather. The National Weather Service issued a tornado warning for the county our school is in. This warning was set to expire a couple of different times and when it was about to, another one was issued. Needless to say, we spent some quality time with each other for an hour and half on the floor of the women's staff restroom in our safe spot. Our librarian was kind enough to bring some books around to the classes to help keep them occupied. I started off reading a few of the books to the class and then let them share the books. I told them to use what they know from Read to Self and Read to Someone during Daily 5 and combine the two together. Since we needed to stay super quiet in order to hear any further instructions from our principal, the class was to read the books to themselves, while sitting EEKK (elbow, elbow, knee, knee) with their partner(s) and sharing the book. I love that what we do on a daily basis with Daily 5 helped out in a situation I never really thought it would be needed. Goes to show how independent these kids are with reading and how it can occupy a good amount of time, all while being more than beneficial!

Comparing and Contrasting Two Stories

Our first CAFE mini-lesson today focused on comparing and contrasting two stories we have read in the past couple of weeks, Peanut Butter and Jelly and Warthogs in the Kitchen. We wrote down ideas to include in all three sections of our diagram. There were several areas that were similar in each book. Below is the breakdown of what was only found in each book, as well as what we found to be the same.

Peanut Butter and Jelly:

• The characters cut the bread.
• They "smooshed" grapes.
• Spread peanut butter.
• Smeared jelly.
• People were in the story.
• Cracked peanuts

Warthogs in the Kitchen:

• They added lots of sugar.
• Put pickles in the cupcakes.
• Broke eggs.

Both Stories:

• They put things in the oven.
• Washed their hands/dishes.
• Ate the cupcakes/sandwich.
• Animals were characters.
• Made a mess in the kitchen.
• Made a bread type of food.
• Cooked/made something in the kitchen.

Math with Someone

To introduce our new activity during Math with Someone we started by doing a "Look and Talk" with a picture in our math big book. The picture showed a little boy who took shapes to create different pictures. The new activity is doing just that. The pair of students who are partners take a bag of shapes, a paper, pencil and clip board to a spot in the room. They create various pictures using the shapes and draw what they created. They can stack the shapes to create pictures or lay them down next to each other.

Exploring with Solid 3D Shapes

Last week, we split into three groups and used our imagination in building with various sizes of cubes, cylinders, cones and spheres. The class worked as a team to try different combinations to see what shapes would stack on each other. Afterwards, we discussed the successes and challenges they found when working with these shapes.

A few of their observations were:

• The sphere would not stay on top of the stack and it could not be a bottom piece.
• The cone would stay on top, but no other shape could go above it.
• The 1/2 sphere would stay on top, but most shapes fell off when we would try to stack a shape on top of it.