Sept. 8-12 Weekly Update

We spent most of our week focusing on our literacy time, math time and a great science activity!  Here's some information on what was accomplished this week and what we plan to do in the coming week.

Literacy

This week, our stations consisted of independent reading, reader's response with book clubs and technology.  During this time we also continued to work on assessing reading and comprehension levels.  The learning targets for all three grade levels included reviewing/introducing the setting, characters and plot of a fiction text.

While students are in their independent station, they are called one-by-one to confer or conference with a teacher.  This individual time gives the teachers a great insight into what reading and comprehension strategies students are putting into their daily practice and what still needs to be worked on.  Our literacy time will look quite similar in the coming week.

Science

The whole room was buzzing with activity this week Tuesday as we put our Sprout Kids together! Thank you to all of the families who donated items to the room and the parents and grandparent that came in to help that day-we certainly needed it!  After the students created their Kids they wrote their hypothesis to answer the question: How will the different levels of light affect the growth of the Sprout Kids?  

We will be checking on the Sprout Kids every other day to document sprout growth and color.  Students will gather in groups and as a class to compare data. 

In the coming weeks, our learning targets for science will included photosynthesis, the oxygen and carbon cycle and the life cycle of a plant.

Math

Math is a very busy and productive time in our learning environment!  The third graders continued to work on multiplying factors to find a product, the fourth graders focused on place value and comparing larger whole numbers and the fifth graders spent a lot of time concentrating on comparing fractions using equivalent fractions.

Another exciting event this week: we started using our Chromebooks!  The students were thrilled to finally get to use the Chromebooks in the classroom.  They will be used throughout the day, but primarily during math, for typing practice and during our writing time.