Reader's Workshop
    This week, students read The Day Rosa Parks was Arrested, a play from our StoryWorks magazine.  The historical fiction text allowed us to grow our knowledge about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement.  Students also learned about cause and effect.  An effect is "the WHAT" happened, and the cause is "the WHY."  Authors use signal words like "Because of...," "As a result..." and "Therefore..." to signal a cause-effect relationship.  Partnerships practiced identifying different effects that resulted because of Mrs. Parks actions on the day she was arrested.

Jake & Henry work together to find text evidence from Scene 6.  

Zoe & Gage study the play's epilogue to learn about Montgomery's decision to do away with segregation laws on it's city buses.  

Ben & Anina show their highlighted proof from the text.  

Writer's Workshop

    In Writing this week, students created different structures of Informational Texts.  Authors use a Box & Bullets to plan "all about" writing and Problem & Solution to show the relationship between an issue and a way to resolve it.  Writers use a Pro & Con list to show the positive and negative aspects of a topic.  They can Compare & Contrast two topics to show how they are alike and different.  We'll use these structures in our upcoming Informational Presentations.  

Math

     Students began a new unit in Math this week.  They practiced creating factor pairs for given numbers.  They learned that a prime number has exactly two factors (ex: 5, 17), and composite numbers have three or more factors (ex:  4, 22).  The exceptions are 1 and 0; these numbers cannot be classified as prime or composite.  Students also practiced naming fractions of a shape and on a number line.  They used multiplication and division to create equivalent fractions, or fractions of the same size or value.  

     

Social Studies

     Students learned about pioneer life in the early 1800s.  We read You Wouldn't Want to Be an American Pioneer to learn about the hardships pioneers faced on their journey:  bath weather, some Native Americans, sickness, lack of food and water, buffalo stampedes and more.  

Social Studies

     In Social Studies this week, we started the new year with Mrs. Jardon.  Mrs. Jardon used to teach in Lindbergh, and she was a docent at the Museum of Westward Expansion.  She taught us all about the expedition of Lewis and Clark as they explored the Louisiana Purchase.  

Zoe shows off her Lewis & Clark journal.  The peace medal on the front represents the way Native Americans often introduced themselves to explorers, in peace and friendship.  

Mrs. Jardon brought many items for us to look at and touch throughout the week. 

Students pretended to be some of they key people in the expedition.

Math

     We focused on numeric (numbers) and nonnumeric (figures, shapes, symbols) patterns this week.  Numeric patterns are present in Input/Output tables.  We must carefully study the table to find out what kind of change is occurring.  We can show they change using an equation like ax4=b.  

Writer's Workshop

     We got back into the swing of things by practicing building our writing stamina.  Students listened to some of Miss Dausmann's favorite picture books including Owl Moon, The Relatives Came, and Owl Moon.  Students then wrote about the topics of each story and shared with the class.  

Reader's Workshop

     This week, we used the NewsELA website to find some nonfiction articles to read.  Students loved combing through the different categories of news stories and selecting pieces they wanted to read.  They also completed and article review on an article of their choice.