Weekly Update- 2/18

In math we are continuing to learn about geometry.  This week we focused on different types of polygons, congruent figures, and symmetry.  We used geoboards and shapes to practice these concepts.  The students also used their bodies to demonstrate what the different types of triangles look like.

In Social Studies we completed our unit on government.  Next week we will be starting our Science unit on the moon! 

In shared reading we read the book, Yo-Yo Ma: World Musician.  This book was about the famous cellist, Yo-Yo Ma.  We learned about his life and his love for music.  The students enjoyed hearing the story about how he once left a 2.5 million dollar cello in a taxi by mistake!  While reading the book we practiced using the glossary to define words and the index to find topics in the book.  In guided reading we reviewed the skills of outlining the plot of a book and using nonfiction text features in a biography.

In writing the students are continuing to work on their animal reports.  They have written interesting lead sentences that will hook the reader in.  They also practiced writing topic sentences and adding details to their paragraphs.  We went to the computer lab today so that the students could complete their cover pages.  We will be finishing our reports next week.

In Fundations we continued to work on words with the -le syllable.  We also learned about some exceptions to the rule such as castle, whistle, and wrestle.  These words have a silent t before the -le.  We will be completing unit 8 next week.

We continued to practice the days of the week in Spanish and played a game of charades to learn about verbs in grammar.  On Thursday we celebrated the 100th day of school.  In the morning the students rotated around 5 different stations that all focued on the number 100.  In one center they researched what was happening 100 year ago.  In another center they drew what they thought they would look like 100 years from now.  In the third center they made a list of 100 things they like about school.  They also had an exercise center in which they did different types of exercises 100 times.  At the last station students traced and cut out their feet until we had 100.  Later in the day we saw how far the feet took us, which ended up being all the way through our classroom and part of the way down the third grade hallway. 

We ended our week with an assembly on bullying.  Don't forget that the Summary of Fiction project is due on Monday, 2/28.  To all of our classmates that are a little "under the weather" we hope you feel better soon!  Enjoy the 3-day weekend!