Room K2's News Blog: Friday, March 23rd

Reader’s Workshop:
We continued working with our nonfiction reading partners to complete a Venn diagram about our fiction and nonfiction text sets. Students also shared interviews about reading nonfiction in our everyday lives. We ended the week by noticing and naming different nonfiction text features and discussed how to use these features as readers.

Writers’ Workshop:
Our writers’ have transitioned this week from writing personal narratives to exploring non-fiction books about birds! Our next unit takes an in-depth look at non-fiction writing as we begin to research Michigan birds to create magazine feature articles. To familiarize our students with the types of books we will be using, students explored books that were: bird field guides, general about birds, or specific to one type of bird. We then took time looking at ways that these different types of non-fiction books can help us in our research. Next we practiced finding facts within these books and recording the facts we learned in our own words onto post-it notes! This is a tricky skill to learn but an important one to practice. Look for info home this week on the bird your child will be focusing on for their research.

Math:
Our mathematicians have been doing lots of shopping in math! We have been working with reading and writing money amounts in decimal notation, using equivalent coin amounts to show equivalent amounts of money, and even using a calculator to compute money amounts. We’ve played a game along the way called “Pick a Coin” which your child could teach you at home!

Word Study/Writing Skills:
This week in Word Study we did a couple of different things when looking at the beginning and ending of different words. We played with ways you could either add to or remove letters from the beginning of one word to make a new word (i.e. chair - hair). Then we took a look at the ends of words and found ways to add letters to change the word (i.e storm - stormy). In our Writing Skills we continued our work on “Good Leads”. This week we focused on the “Action/Sound” lead. Students are learning what makes a “Good Lead” and earns them a 4 out of 4 on a four-point rubric. As we prepare your child for writing prompts in the future, we want them to learn to start out with a lead that INSTANTLY hooks their reader.

Social Studies:
Students spent time putting their finishing touches on their Then and Now assessment. They were required to use some of the information that they learned about Walled Lake’s history to do comparison writing. Students will be assessed not only on their content, but also on their sentence structure and quality of work. We ended the week by sharing some very interesting pieces of history in our Artifact Museum. Students shared many wonderful artifacts, some of which included: a 50 year old toy train, old photographs, books, jewelry, an alarm clock, a beverage crate, and a cherry knot maul that was 125 years old!

Science:
The scientists explored the wind this week. We made a class anemometer and students made their own with paper. An anemometer shows how fast the wind is blowing. We also made a pinwheel, which is similar to an anemometer. The scientists had fun exploring with the pinwheel! There are so many ways to make it work. We talked about the moon phases and how the moon is always changing. The moon is always a big ball, but we only see the part of the moon that’s lit. The sun shines on the moon and lights it up. The scientists also had fun exploring “bubbles in the wind”. With this experiment the students could see where the air was moving.

Don’t forget- Night Sky homework is due on Monday and the weather calendar on Friday.

Important Dates/Reminders:
• Monday, March 26th- Night Sky homework DUE

• Friday, March 30th- Weather Calendar DUE

• Friday, March 30th- Camp Read S’more! Don’t forget you donations for our trail mix, books to read, flashlight, blanket and pop-up tent!

• April 2nd-5th- SPRING BREAK! NO SCHOOL

• Monday, April 9th- RETURN TO SCHOOL

Here are some fun photos from the end of our week :-).