We Have Been Busy Little Bees!

Sciences socials - en français!

We are focusing on mapping skills and language acquisition in Social Studies.  Beginning with the familiar, while we build our second language knowledge, will help us also build confidence.  Students are reviewing the provinces and territories of Canada, but in French!  They are also becoming familiar with the globe in French, learning the oceans and continents as well as other map and globe skills. 

Math

 In Math we have continued to focus on Number Sense.  The above journal helped me see your child's understanding of the given quantity and his or her comfort with four or five digit numbers.  Many students felt more comfortable with 4-digit numbers.  My goal is to move them into the 5-digit comfort zone.  Real life applications for these numbers was a little tricky, but lead to some pretty interesting math journal stories!

Two of our open ended questions pertaining to Comparing and Ordering Whole Numbers to 100 000, and Representing and Renaming Whole Numbers to 100 000 came from Edugains Gap Closing resources.  Click here to access the site. (Modules 4 and 5).

 This past week, we have been focusing on reading and representing numbers in a variety of ways.

 Understanding place value gives us a greater understanding of numbers and the value of their individual digits. We have been using the place value chart to help us read, write and round numbers.

This next math journal helped me see how students understood comparing and ordering numbers.  In my rush to give students timely feedback, I returned the math journals to them without scanning any samples.  Perhaps I can scan a few today.

 Below, you can see students using number lines and benchmarks to help them round numbers in a variety of ways.  I love how well they worked in groups.  Some used the place value chart and the rounding rules to help them.  We have a few rhymes to help us remember the steps for rounding.  For example:

Circle your number

Look next door

5 or greater

Add one more

Numbers to the left 

Stay the same

Numbers to the right

Zero's your name!

OR

Find the number
Look next door
4 or less, just ignore
Greater than 5, add one more

I am especially pleased that some groups included a written explanation to accompany their work, and some groups rounded using more than one method!

With partners, students showed a pretty good understanding of rounding, but to ensure that each student had fully grasped the concept, they had to complete an Exit Ticket on their own before leaving.  This showed me that several students still needed to reinforce the concept.  But at least half the class has completely mastered this skill!  The next day, Mr. Bristow continued working with rounding until almost all students could meet success with rounding 5-digit numbers.











Based on the Exit tickets, I was able to pull a small group for guided math to reinforce the concept of rounding while the rest of the class worked on a Number Sense activity with a partner.  One student was eager to show her work (seen below).  All students showed success and graduated to the addition game.

Using math manipulatives to solve the problem!

 Tomorrow, students will be reading for a Rounding Problem!!!! Yay! It is quite challenging, so stay tuned for updates.

Français

En français, we continue to study le verbe avoir. Ask your child to sing you the Avoir rap!



We have begun our French journals with a scripted journal by filling in the blanks with familiar and practiced vocabulary.  But, yesterday, with a Journal Helper, students wrote independent journals.   They seemed pretty proud to communicate their ideas in French on their own!

Language Arts

In English, we have continued to focus on the First 20 Days of Reading.  On Friday we practiced Buzzing effectively.  First we began with a jigsaw.  Students from home groups were divided into expert groups.  Each member had to become an expert on their given topic, then report back to their home groups.  This taught students to take jot notes of main ideas and important supportive details, discuss their findings with their group ,and  respect group etiquette.  Each student had to take ownership for their learning and responsibility for the teaching of others.  Most handled this task extremely well.  Included are the five texts (taken from This Child, Every Child) that we studied that afternoon.

In reading, we have also been concentrating on making connections.  We know as readers, we are constantly thinking beyond what is written to deepen our understanding of text.  One of the reading strategies that we use is making a variety of connections (as seen below).

Our current goal:



We began by writing a group connection.  Students provided the ideas for me to write a connection using a graphic organizer that will help me meet the established success criteria.

We connected the text Wonder, from our read aloud to a picture book entitled The OK Book.

Mr. Bristow then read The Dot.  In groups, students were asked to make a text-to-text connection between The Ok Book and The Dot. I just love how well most groups worked together without reminders and encouragement from the teacher. Once the groups completed their connections, they switched connections with another group.  Their next task was to write feedback for each other.  The group had to come up with a Star (something they liked about the work) and an Arrow ( a next step to improve the work) based on the established success criteria.  This proved challenging for some.

One of our strongest connections!

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This group had a difficult time coming to a consensus, but with prompting they wrote a complex connection. As a next step, we would like them indicate how they can apply what they have learned from the connection or explain why this connection is important to us.  I really like how they finally pulled all their ideas together into a well developed connection.

Some of the groups were bang on with their connections! Others will use their feedback to improve their connection.  The next phase in the gradual release of responsibility will be to write individual connections to submit to peer and teacher feedback.

Thank you to Mackenzie for providing a wonderful fruity tea for Tea Time today.  Thank you to our servers and washers today. ( Each student has a weekly job assignment.)