This was a very eventful week. It started with a mock courtroom experience to help us practice our persuasive writing strategies. We used the OREO method to help us in two cases. Dogs are better vs. cats are better and indoor recess is better vs. outdoor recess is better. OREO stands for opinion, reasons, examples, opinion. This activity helped us to see just how effective it was to restate our opinion multiple times as well as give many reasons and examples to make a strong argument and persuade your audience. We even had a real lawyer (Benjamins dad) come in for the mock courtroom and tell us how important giving many reasons and examples is when building your case! On Thursday we had our student led conferences that I don't need to talk much about because you were there! Every single child had someone there to share their work and growth with! This makes my teacher heart so happy. Watching you and your children made me beam!!! And of course we had STEM day today where students got to exercise their engineering skills. Students used the process of asking, imagining, planning, creating, and improving to 1. make a roller coaster that could get a ping pong ball from a starting point to an ending point then 2. make a bridge that could hold 100 pennies. For more pictures click the science tab!
0 Comments
Today we celebrated Earth Day by decorating some rocks for our school garden and tilling the soil! But all week we have been working on ways we can help the Earth by focusing on the Monk seal an endangered seal species in the Mediterranean which relates to our country of study, Greece! In Greece (our International Day country), France (Ms. Frank's class's country), Italy (Mrs. Frank's class's country), and Morocco (Ms. Towfik's class's country) Monk seals are endangered. They are one of the world's most endangered marine mammals with fewer than 500 remaining today! We related this to our persuasive writing steps: 1. See a problem 2. Think 3. Write To solve this problem
Students wrote letters to adults and children in Greece about the problem and how they suggest that they help these critically endangered species! Like we discussed last week, we can make a difference and we can initiate change! Also the study of Monk seals helped students connect seals to other marine animals they read about in reading groups with me! In math we moved on from addition to discuss subtraction and strategies that help us subtract numbers (use fingers, use cubes, use dots, use a number line, visualize it) Ask your child what strategy they use for subtraction. We have been working on fluency in adding and subtracting numbers to 10. That's why you might have been hearing your child sing the challenge rap. It starts like: "This is the challenge rap but I guess you know that..." Also we had buddy reading this week! To see pictures of us reading with our buddies check out the ELA/reading/writing We have been loving this persuasive writing unit! We are quickly realizing how we can make writing to make the world a better place! We discovered that one of our biggest jobs as opinion writers is to find problems and to use writing to convince people to help fix the problem! We found that we can be convincing by giving our readers lots of reasons and examples! We are like the Lorax! He cared so much about what was happening to the tress and we care so much about fixing problems we see around us too! We identified problems in our class and in our school (for example jackets and bookbags on the floor) then we chose to write a sign, letter, song, or book about the problem, why it is an issue, and how it can be fixed! One of our students wrote the assistant principal about this issue and she responded with a letter back! The letter inspired students to write and perform songs to the class about the importance of hanging jackets. Our writing can make changes!!!!! We are going to move on to continuing to solve problems and discuss the big problem in the Mediterranean- monk seals becoming endangered. This is a problem that affects Greece (our country of study!) In a couple weeks we will also have a mock courtroom! And the students will prepare opinions with arguments on conflicting issues and use strong reasons and examples to make a winning case! Any lawyer parents? Contact me if you are interested in participating in this! |
About Me
This is my seventh year at HFE. I love teaching, reading, writing, traveling, and sushi Archives
April 2021
|