- Saturday Live is this upcoming Saturday.
- Thursday is a half day for the students. We will dismiss at noon.
- Midterms will come home on Friday.
Heritage-Who You Are
Stories can tell a person the important parts of a person's heritage. The students read Josheph Bruchac's poem "Birdfoot's Grandpa" in our Lead21 book. The poem shares a story about how a grandfather takes the time to clear the toads from the road before he continues down the road. We also read about a novel, Once Upon a Quinceanera by Julia Alverez that tells about a girl who and her quinceanera. The students identified that you can learn a lot about a person's heritage through the stories they share.
Determining Importance
An important skill for students to use as they read is determining the importance of any given text within the body of text they are reading. We have used 3 qualifiers to determine if information in the text is important for us to remember.
1) Would we be able to understand the topic if the text was not included?
2) How much space does the author give for the given idea?
3) What is the main idea and how does the text support the main idea?
The students will be applying this skill throughout the year as we ask what information we need to understand and what information is bonus information.
What is a Scientist?
There is a very strong stereo type of scientists in our society that I hope to break throughout the year. The students drew their idea of a scientist and we discussed why most of the class drew the a typical scientist in the lab experimenting with chemicals. The students discussed that they often see scientists on TV wearing lab coats and experimenting we chemicals. I then gave students the opportunity to begin exploring other careers in science. We will continue discussing careers in science tomorrow and present one of the scientists students have researched.
Map Scale
The students have been working on map skills the past week looking at how to use the compass, using the key of a map, and using the scale tool to understand the distance between 2 given points. Students practiced this skill today as they were given a map of the United States and they had to find the approximate distance between 2 locations on the map.
Renaming Numbers-Daily Code
An important concept for students to understand as they add and subtract numbers is to rename a number. For instance, students need to know that 1 thousand can also be 10 hundreds in order to regroup. We worked in our math notebooks today as I reviewed/introduced the concept to the class. The students will continue practicing this concept tomorrow.