GT Update
March 6-10, 2017
Kinder
1st Grade
2nd Grade
Gumdrop Geodesic Domes
Gumdrop Geodesic Domes
Gumdrop Geodesic Domes
3rd Grade
We then watched a Brain Pop video on computer programming and connected it to our unit on systems. This transitioned into simple machines, in which the "input" is different than the "output". Some examples they came up with were toasters and ovens. Perhaps the most creative example was people and food. A student said that when we eat food, it is the "input". The output... you get the idea. We also said that energy could be the output as well. I introduced them to equations as functions and they had fun with the function machine game. They played in pairs, and had to figure out the rule, where x is the input and y is the output. They felt pretty accomplished when I told them this is a part of the 5th grade math curriculum.
We wrapped the day up with Tuck Everlasting. They have made very insightful predictions, and truly hate to stop reading. We made it to chapter 18.
4th Grade
Our final activities involved Shakespeare's The Tempest and our novel Wednesday Wars. I showed the class a version of The Tempest from Project Gutenberg, which is very close to the original copies. After reading a page of the first Act, we then listened to a performance while following along with Shakespeare's words. As I'm sure you know, Shakespeare in it's original form is "a little" difficult to understand. Because of this, we watched a version from BBC, which consists of eight short video clips created to help children understand the main idea of the play. The main character of Wednesday Wars, Holling Hoodhood, absolutely LOVES Caliban's curses and insults. I shared some of them with the class, and then they got to create their own insults directed at fictional characters, , using our "insult kit". Some brought home the list of words to share at home. (We did address keeping the insults to fictional characters and NOT at friends and family.) We ended the day by reading part of the next chapter, November. They were excited to understand the Shakespeare references in this chapter. We ran out of time, and will continue this chapter next week.
5th Grade
We began our day with Hands on Equations, focusing on "convenient zeros" and equating (-x) to star (the white pawn that is labeled with an *). The equations are getting much more difficult, but the students do a wonderful job simplifying the problem, adding convenient zeros, and using "legal moves" (if you take from one side, you have to take an equal amount from the other to keep the equation balanced). I'm very proud of them! Most of the students had time to share their work on Seesaw, but a few ran out of time. I told them they are welcome to come to my room to complete it at a later time.
The rest of our day was spent on our new novel, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. The first activity was character analysis. They were each assigned a character and they had to record what they have learned so far about this character and predict their future importance using evidence from the text. They shared their thoughts with their classmates, first with those who analyzed the same character, then with a group of students who all had a different character. We then wrapped up the day reading a few more chapters. Today it was revealed that Bruno's dad is a Nazi, which a few of the students suspected already. We stopped partway through chapter 6.
Our book club started today, and we discussed chapters 1-3. I asked students to continue reading to chapter 13 for the Thursday after Spring Break. We will be reading quickly so we have time to finish the series before the end of school. Thank you for purchasing the book for them. This is a wonderful way for us to end the year together before they head off to middle school.