Sunday, April 13, 2014

Happy April! Our lastest class picture with the masks they created in Art with Ms. Mayabb! Darling!



Last weeks Cool Tool Lesson was, I can be respectful by knowing how to be a friend.

One way we practice being a good friend is working with out team! Ask your student what color team are they on? Have they earned lunch with Ms. Erikson yet? Teams can earn points by being safe, respectful learners, and working together. The team with the most points at the end of the week, earns lunch with me!

This week in our Cool Tool lesson is, I can be a learner by knowing how to be a test taker. We are partners with Mr. Hudson's 4th grade class to help them be smart test takers on the MAP Test the next few weeks. We will send encouraging words with songs, notes, homemade cards, and sweet treats.  
 
Math: We are working on adding doubles plus one and doubles plus 2. We are learing more about 9+7= 16 and how if we add one to 9 and take one away from 7 is 10+6 which also makes 16! What smart Mathmaticians! The Topic 5 Test will be on Wednesday.  We are tieing in science with math too with plants and The Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carl. We also read Herb, The Vegetarian Dragon By: Jules Bass and Debbie Harter. We observed in the story doubles in the illustrations and in Herb's graden. We are continuing to do ST Math Monday and Friday for 30 minutes, and FAST math daily. Check out the Benton website to do these great math programs at home too!


Student working together to engineer an Eric Carl fruit and vegetable puzzle.
 
       Students on FASTT Math. Rememebr to practice at home to to become a Math Wizard!

Writing: We started our Opinion Writing Unit! We have done movement lessons where students walk to the blue carpet or the solar system carpet to show his or her opinion. For example; Do you like wheat bread on the blue carpet, or white bread on the solar system carpet better? Do you like cats on the blue carpet, or dogs on the solar system carpet. In the pictures below, students are writing their opinions. We are going to come up with individual and a classroom writing goal to help our brains!





Reading: In Reading we are continuing to do our four Literacy Stations. One of the Literacy Stations include technology with building words on the ipad or MyOn. We learned readers do three things when they read. Readers read the pictures first, then read the words, and finally retell the story. We have practiced what readers do during small groups and indepedent reading time. We are continuing to practice our know excuse words. Some of the words we practices this week were: come, this, that, and we. We read out loud Animals A-Z, By: Louisa Cirnford, and Too Loud Lilly, By: Sofie Laguna, There was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly  By: Sims Taback and Miss Maple's Seeds Story and Pictures by Eliza Wheeler. Mrs. Wheeler is Ms. Erikson's older sister's in Los Angeles friend! How neat! What fun books and science too!

Science: We are continuing the Plant and Animal Unit. We are looking at animals' habitats We have observed non-living and living plants and discussed the differences. We then labeled plants, stem, root, flowers, leaf. We learned and discovered plants need water, soil, space, and sun to live. One of Ms. Erikson's teachers, Dr. Hanuscin from Mizzou, taught us a neat lesson about aniamals and ways animals survive. For example, we discussed a hawk and how the talons and sharp beak help them. We went on a Discoery Walk this week and then wrote in our Scince notebooks what we observed and wonderings. We observed all different kinds of plants and flowers.

Drawing a map, labeling, and observing our Benton STEM garden and greenhouses.

Outside garden science lesson

Being Scienctists documenting our learning


 
We also Enginnered Plants this week with cubes. Students made all sorts of vegetable and fruit plants as well as trees. Some examples were bananas, sunflowers, lemon trees, and roses, such Eager Enginners!