Mrs. Wood’s Classroom Blog

Wow, can you believe it is the end of April??

Opening: Students corrected their DOL and math problems for today. Today we focused on adding money.

Math: We worked on lesson 10.10 today. It continues to talk about place value and the value of the ten-thousands place. We practiced writing big numbers and using the word DIGIT to represent 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. We wrote numbers and gave each digit its value – for example if we wrote 3, 481 and wanted to know the value of the 4, it would be four hundred because the 4 is in the hundreds place.

Interventions: Groups finished up their books today focusing on a comprehension activity to see how much they understood and remembered from their stories.

Library

Silent Reading

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading - Today we read the story Thundercake. It is such a fun story all about being afraid of thunder (I can relate to that one! ). We read the story and then the students completed a worksheet similar to the one yesterday where they had to sequence what happened in the story in the order that it happened in.

Working with Words – Students continued working with the -ed and -ing endings

Read Aloud

Art

Writing: We are continuing to use our Powers in our writing. Students used the organizer that we started on Monday to begin writing a personal narrative on a topic of their choosing. The students also had an opportunity to share their writing plan with a friend and will continue with this writing tomorrow.

Homework: Home Link 10.10 and Handwriting

Opening: Due to assembly today, the students completed two DOL sentences and we corrected them together.

Assembly: Today we talked about respect for property and what this means. The students in the audience (read: all the students in the school) had the chance to share ways we might show respect for property – ideas included picking up trash we see outside, cleaning up our own messes, not touching the walls and windows as we walk down the hallway and more. We can also transfer this to PENCILS and other items given to us to use. They are our tools and we can’t do well in school without the tools we need.

Social Studies: Students took their quiz on the Pilgrim Communities chapter.

Math: For math we continue to review place value — we looked at place value up to the ten-thousands place. It can help to think about writing “backwards” to keep the numbers in the correct space so when we read the number the regular way we have the numbers where we want them. We also took a look through our FOCUS on the MEAP books so students can get some feedback on how they did on the pretests they took. We will use these books throughout the next few weeks to give the students extra practice on GLCEs they may not have mastered yet.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today the students practiced our strategy focus of Sequence of Events by reading a story story about fishing. Sam and his grandfather go fishing and it tells us what happens on the trip. Students had to put the events in the order that they happened after reading the story.

Working with Words – Today for working with words the students manipulated their spelling words by the -ed or -ing endings.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Today we took our writing prompt. The theme was Anger. This should have been a relatively easy topic for the students to write about since we have been talking about Anger with the story Carousel and Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and how the characters were angry. I also briefly reminded them to think about what they have learned about with Power Writing to help them as they wrote their papers.

Homework: Home Link 10.9 and Spelling worksheet

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and math review for today.

Music

Interventions: This week the students are reading books that talk about birthdays (they go along with the story Carousel that we read during reading over the last two weeks). Today everyone worked on the vocabulary sheet and did a picture walk of the story. They really finding you can learn so much about the story by reading the pictures.

Math: Today we worked on lesson 10.8 which reviews place value, but incorporates the 1,000s place. We reviewed our base-10 blocks and how a cube is the 1s place, a long is the 10s place and a flat is the 100s place. There is a big cube that stands for the 1,000s place. Students practiced telling me how many of each kind of shape go together to make the next shape (so 10 cubes make 1 long, etc). We also “made numbers” by having students stand at the front of the room holding a certain number of each shape and we “read” our friends to get our numbers.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today we took a look at the vocabulary and did a text talk lesson for our new story, Thundercake. Students also were introduced to our new spelling words they’ll have for this week.

Working with Words – Today we are revisiting some of our word wall words that the students are still struggling with. We are looking at their, there and they’re as well as the words what and wanted.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: In writing today, we are continuing our look at Power Writing. Students each got a premade bubble map organizer that was already labeled with P1 and P2 sections. Their job was to select a topic (the P1), then decide what they were going to talk about within that topic (the P2s) and extend those P2s with details which will become the P3s. We are practicing not spending ALL of our time on our plan as we write. Later in the week the students will use these organizers to begin writing Power Paragraphs.

Science: To compliment our science unit on plants, the students watched a short video called “Our Green Planet” which talks about how plants have evolved into the many different kind of plants we have today.

 Homework: Home Link 10.8, Write spelling words 5x each

Please note that I was out this morning for a training — the activities up until lunch the students did with our substitute teacher.

Opening: Students completed their DOL sentence and math review problems for today.

Math: Students took section 3 and section 4 of the math pretest in the Focus on the MEAP booklets we have. These will allow me to see where the students weak spots are so I can make sure we work on those skills throughout the rest of the year.

Interventions: Students finished their packets for the week today, working on re-reading their stories and working on the comprehension page.

Movie: The training I was at this morning was in the computer lab and the students have been working really hard at “becoming 3rd graders” so I rewarded them during computer lab time with a movie. They watched half of A Bug’s Life.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today for guided reading, we focused on some MEAP prep materials and took some short quizzes on the strategies we have been working on in the classroom in our reading series (following directions, text structure and making judgments).

Writing: Students and I continued to talk about Power Writing today and they had the chance to practice using the terms we talked about. We all picked a topic then wrote 4 sentences. I had the students go back and see if they could find Power 1, Power 2 and (hopefully) Power 3 sentences. We will continue to work on this next week.

Recess

Writing: We continued the writing activity by reinforcing how we can use our Thinking Maps we’ve been learning about to help us Power Write. The students were amazed when they saw that the bubble and double bubble maps can be broken down into Power 1, Power 2 and Power 3 sentences.

Movie: We finished watching the movie for the end of today.

Homework: none

Opening: Students worked on their DOL and math review for today.

Math: Today students revisited area by tracing around their hand and their foot on grid paper. They had to determine how many square centimeters there hand or foot was. We talked about how you can count more than 1/2 of a covered square as one, but if its less than half you don’t count it (the concept of the rounding up or down is at play here). If it is exactly 1/2 you count it as 1/2.

Physical Education

Social Studies: Students learned about what Plymouth, Massachusetts looks like today. It is a “living museum” with the Mayflower II museum and a community where people dress and act like the Pilgrims did.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – We read the story Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse and compared it to Carousel. Both characters become angry about something and do something that isn’t nice as a result. Students made a Double Bubble Map to describe these two stories.

Working with Words – We reviewed our spelling words for the week and chanted our word wall words.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students practiced Power Writing today. This is something I learned about at the writing training I was at on Monday. A Power 1  is the topic we are going to talk about. Power 2s are supporting ideas about the Power 1. Power 3s are the details that about the Power 2s. If students don’t include the Power 3s in their writings, they don’t get very good scores because the “meat” of the writing is in the details. An example of a Power Writing organizer might look like this:

• Power 1 – Junk Food
  • Power 2 – ice cream
    • Power 3 – mint chocolate chip
  • Power 2 – cookies
    • Power 3 – chocolate chip

 Homework: Home Link 10.7, Spelling Triangles

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and some math review problems with adding money.

Math: We reviewed and corrected our math homework together to help reinforce the rounding since it goes along with what we were doing today. We also talked about making change. The example I gave was that last Friday when I was at a conference, I went to lunch with some other teachers. We had soup and salad and it cost about $8.32 for the meal with a drink. If I paid with a $10 bill, how much change would I get? We found this answer two ways — first by simply subtracting 8.32 from 10.00 to find the answer. I also showed them how to round to count up. For example, I would want to round 8.32 up to 8.40 and would add 8 cents to do that. To get from 8.40 to the next dollar, I would add 60 cents. Finally I would see I was at 9 dollars and would need to add 1 more dollar to get to 10. Then I can add up all those amounts (8 cents + 60 cents + 1 dollar) to get my answer of $1.68 as my change.

Interventions: Students worked on the strategy of “Following Directions” today by reading through their books and then writing down the steps of how to make something.

Library: We had a special library event today. The Book Fair is here. Students had the opportunity to write down a “wish list” of items to buy from the fair. This fair is extra special because it is Buy 1, Get 1 Free so you can buy two books for one low price. The fair is open through Friday.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today we revisited “Carousel” and completed a story map. The MEAP test does talk about story elements such as character, setting, problem and solution and sometimes students don’t spend enough time thinking about these features of the stories we read. So we revisited Carousel since we just recently finished it and students looked back to find all of the characters (we even discussed why they might be a main or supporting character), the setting(s) we saw in the story and the problem(s) that Alex had and how they were resolved.

Working with Words – Today we took a look at relationships between words and used bridge maps. We talked about similies which is comparing things to each other. I might say she was as white as a sheet to compare that a girl’s skin tone was as white as a sheet. We did several examples together and then the students practiced making their own. A few of the ones the students came up with were clear as water and slow as a turtle.

SSR

Art

Writing: We made a Criterian Chart for writing personal narratives (the most common type of writing style). We talked about what helps us get a passing score on the MEAP writing section and what we need to make sure we include in our own writing as we look ahead to 3rd grade and beyond.

Homework: Home Link 10.6 and Handwriting

Opening: Due to assembly today, students worked on 2 DOL sentences and no math review.

Assembly: During assembly today we talked about our school pledge – how can we all make Harrison Park a place for everyone to belong? One way is that if we see a fight happening, instead of sitting and watching the fight, we can go get an adult and get some help. Mrs. Green also talked to us about “good” and “bad” friends. You may remember the book and movie “The Red Balloon”. We can think about our friends that way — a good friend is like the air in that balloon. They are going to lift us up and encourage us to do the right thing. A not-so-good friend is like the tether that is holding the balloon down to the ground — it may keep us from doing the right thing.

Poetry: Ms. Tala-Clark, our PAL, is putting up a poetry display. We took poems we did awhile ago and rewrote them on nice paper to be displayed in the hallway. Not all of the poems will go out there but we had several really good pieces that will be displayed on the wall. Be sure to check them out!

Math: We worked on lesson 10.5 today which deals with estimating and finding the exact cost when using money. We discussed why estimating can be useful in the store — it’ll help you know if you have enough money to buy all of the items that you want or if you need to make a choice between something. We also looked at the differences in the amounts when we estimated vs. when we found the actual cost. Most items in our example we only had to round up by 1 or 2 cents each and that made our estimate amount and our exact amount very close to each other.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Today students took their test on the story Carousel. We also did a short supplemental test on the -le endings we’ve been reviewing.

Working with Words – we did a rhyming activity today using _ear and _eer endings. Students tried to come up with words that would fit one or both of these endings.

The Red Balloon – Mrs. Green shared her video with us and we watched it before recess.

Recess (Many students had to stay in during recess this afternoon to complete homework — please remember homework is not optional. It is designed to reinforce what we are doing at school and help your child learn these concepts. As the weather gets warmer, the students aren’t going to want to stay inside to have to finish their work, but they will.)

Writing: After a few day reprieve since I was out, today we put the finishing touches on our Thank You letters for our Take Home Packs.  These will get mailed out to the donors at the end of this week.

Homework: Home Link 10.5

Hello Families!

 On Friday and Monday I was out at separate workshops in order to be a better teacher for your students. I learned a lot and came away with some GREAT strategies. I already knew much of what they shared with us, but having a fresh look at things never hurts!   Mr. Dykstra was here with the students on both days. I’ll give you a brief update of what they did on both days.

Monday, April 21st

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and some review math problems.

Music

Interventions: During interventions today the students’ groups all got new books, previewed their vocabulary words for the stories and took a picture walk of the story.

Math: For math today the students did a MEAP pre-test activity. We are very lucky to have MEAP preparation materials for each student to use. We are starting with the pre-tests so I can determine where THIS class is in need of the most help to get them ready for the test in the fall. We will use these books periodically throughout the rest of the school year.

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Students worked on the questions at the back of the story Carousel. They previewed the questions first, then listened to the story on audio while reading along before answering the questions.

Working with Words – Students did a making words activity today. Their secret word was “playing”

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: We are still struggling, as a grade level, with writing complete sentences so today the students did an activity to help them remember to use sentences. They thought about an orange and had to write THREE things about the orange in a short list. Then they practiced making each thing on the list into a sentence. For example if the list was: bumpy, juicy and round they would use each one of those word in a separate sentence like this – Oranges are bumpy on the outside. They are juicy on the inside. Oranges are round.

Science: Students worked on some plant worksheets for science today.

Homework: Reading Comprehension, Spelling Words 5x

Friday, April 18

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and math review for today.

Math: Students worked on math boxes from this week. They began working on them alone and then Mr. Dykstra worked with them to correct the boxes they had completed.

Interventions: Some groups had finished their work for this week so they did a Parts of Speech lesson while the other groups finished their work packet from this week.

Computer Lab: Students visited the computer lab where they worked on literacy activities on study island or starfall

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – Students read through a phonics reader called “My Brother”. They looked for -le ending words that have two syllables (like giggle) in the story to reinforce the phonics strategy we have been working on.

Working with Words – Students took their spelling test for this week.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students did a Draw-Write-Now activity today. They made a picture of Squanto, a Native American who helped the Pilgrims when they came to America. Although this seems like a Thanksgiving activity, we’ve been talking about the Pilgrims and Squanto in Social Studies so it fits with that.

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and some addition problems with 2 and 3 digit numbers.

Tornado Drill: We had a practice tornado drill this morning. The students did a really amazing job. Due to all of the glass areas in our school, it can be a tight squeeze where we need to go. Fortunately our 2nd grade bodies are smaller than the 5th graders were are by and all of the kids did an awesome job!

Math: We worked on Lesson 10.4 today. Students looked at how much things cost back in 1897 and how much they might cost today in comparison. They were surprised at some of the differences! We also learned how to subtract numbers on a calculator. (Tonight’s homework asks them to use a calculator — if you don’t have one at home, I did show them how to subtract without one so the calculator isn’t necessary.)

Physical Education

Social Studies: We are starting a new section in our book, learning about the community the Pilgrims built when they came to America. We learned about Plymouth and the bay next to it. We talked about how Squanto, the Native American, helped the Pilgrims learn to grow food and build houses. We also learned that the Pilgrims came to America on the Mayflower because they wanted to be able to worship how they wanted to.

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading – We reviewed Multi-Flow maps today. We talked about how these maps show Cause/Effect relationships (the cause being the WHY and the effect being the WHAT happens as a result). We read Carousel together as a class and then students filled in the Multi-Flow map.

Working with Words – We did a making words activity today. Our secret word was “detective”.

Read Aloud/SSR

Recess

Writing: Students finished working on their Thank You notes. Those that published their final piece got to add a drawing to go along with it.

Homework: Home Link 10.4 and Spelling

Opening: Students worked on their DOL sentence and a pictograph today. Pictographs tell us something using symbols (pictures) to represent a certain amount. Today I made a small chart showing for each TWO tests a student passed. Therefore the students had to count by 2 to discover the answer. This seems really easy but these problems on the MEAP always provide the answer if the symbols were worth one and students get confused. We’ll do several of these between now and the end of the year.

Math: In math today we pulled out the calculators and practiced entering dollar amounts. Students noticed very quickly that $1.49 on a price tag comes out as 1.49 on a calculator. We also practiced inputting cents on the calculators as well (the students have a choice to enter a zero first or just start with a decimal).

Interventions: Groups continued to work on their packets for the week. Some students did not get all of their worksheets done so they’ll have a little extra time on Friday to finish those.

Library

SSR

Lunch

Literacy Block:
Guided Reading -  Today we read the story Carousel in our Triangle Knees groups. Students first previewed the organizer we did to help us infer what is happening in the story, then we read the story in our groups before working on the organizer on our own.

Working with Words – We worked on some spelling pattern work that will help the students when they are remembering how to spell these words.

SSR

Art

Writing: Students continued to work on their thank you letters. The conferencing is making a huge difference, they really starting to see what they need to put into these letters. I am impressed

Homework: Home Link 10.3, Handwriting