In an effort to extend our Earth Day explorations, we welcomed our Preschool 1 buddies to participate in the action. We began our time together with a read aloud of Not for Me Please, I Choose to Act Green by Maria Godsey. As we were reading, students were able to join in the repeated refrain, “Not for me, please!”
Due to some absences, we were doubled up – each fourth grader working with two preschool buddies. The activity involved coloring a globe, tracing and cutting out hand prints, and reflecting on and recording real ways each person can “act green.”
Some suggestions included:
using reusable containers for snacks.
eating healthier snacks that don’t have packaging.
recycling or reusing paper.
shutting off water when brushing teeth.
composting leftover food.
using reusable straws.
Patient and proactive, we managed double duty with great dexterity. Our little buddies were delighted.
Multiple Source
To learn more about Luke (the main character of Not for Me, Please) and “acting green” check out the following website:
Today, we had the opportunity to visit our buddies’ “Cool Tool Museum.” Mr. Matthew, our docent for the day, welcomed us warmly and provided a bit of background on the process of developing the display. Our buddies tinkered with tools, sorted sundry samples, planned on paper, created with clay, analyzed the “art” of an architect, meandered to the national museum in the making, and prepared for presentation. Our buddies gave us a grand tour and shared about their work. Afterwards, we sat down and shared some tool-related texts.
As we continue to explore our central idea of structure, we sought to make connections. We are grateful to our buddies for expanding our ideas of structure to include the structural design of the tools themselves and the structure of their display.
Earth Day was extraordinary! This morning, students came to school ready to rally round the ideas of reducing, reusing, recycling. With only 15 minutes to prepare, everyone sprang into action to finalize the last-minute details.
At 8:20 a.m., after students from third and fifth grade settled into our space, our first group got our attention with a powerful and provocative Google Slides presentation.
Once they had everyone’s attention, the team introduced their “treasure” hunt. Equipped with two baskets, groups rummaged ’round the room for rubbish, which they were required to sort into trash or recyclables. Each items was assigned a certain number of points, which added a strategic element to the search.
After adding up their points, teams dispersed to explore other activities which included a variety of games, videos, an outdoor scavenger hunt, up-cycled creative constructions, and an examination of live lettuce. The variety of activities providing an opportunity for everyone to explore and learn.
This afternoon, we took time to tie our Earth Day endeavor to our central idea. Reflection, a critical part of the process, allowed us to consider the following key components – concepts, clarity, cohesiveness, and creativity. Tomorrow, we will revisit our work and reflect again through the lens of STRUCTURE.
**A Scholar has a goal: This week, we answered 2,600 questions and almost 27 hours on IXL. What a great start for our final quarter.
Log on and “Launch” into some learning with Everyday Math. (Note: Log on information is in your planner.) **Alert: Any lessons in Unit 5 can be reviewed.**
After reading and reflecting on another chapter of Homeless Birdand working with our thinking buddies on another angle endeavor, we were ready to finish out our “Friday” with reducing, reusing, and recycling in mind.
Earth Day is on Monday, April 22. Having agreed to participate in a collaborative learning experience with students in the third and fifth grades, the room was buzzing this afternoon as each group eagerly assembled its activity. There is a wide assortment of ideas to share with our peers, each needing to be STRUCTURED strategically in order to accommodate various sized groups, ages, and interests. It will interesting to see what other action comes from this initial inquiry.
Today, we had a lot of questions about quatrains as we sought to compose a poem related to our text. The challenge involved identifying a topic, crafting phrases with a rhythm, and identifying the rhyme scheme. The sentiment and the STRUCTURE were important considerations. Topics included: the wedding, the market, school, writing, learning, embroidery / stitching, sadness, fruit, and more. Some students opted to write two separate poems, while others drafted one poem with two stanzas.
What is the rhyme scheme of this quatrain poem?
With each stitch worries fade,
While special memories are made.
Maa’s green sari and the tamarind tree,
Embroidered they will go with me.
During math time today, we continued our work with angles, but we definitely stepped it up a bit. Using a paper protractor, folded differently than yesterday, we worked with thinking buddies to identify ALL the mystery angles. If that was not challenge enough, we had to do it without the lights (an unexpected surprise) and with an audience of assistant teachers (not a surprise). In addition to wrestling with the mathematical concepts (shapes, angles, fractions, division), we had the opportunity to put the following math practices in place:
Overarching habits of mind of a productive math thinker
Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them
a.k.a. Struggle!
Reasoning and Explaining
Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others
a.k.a. Show evidence to justify thinking!
Everyone chose their thinking buddies wisely today and embraced the challenge together. It was exciting to see students use a wide variety of tools and strategies during this activity.
Being scholars, we were really able to highlight these two math practices in a powerful way.
We ended our day with the much-anticipated planning and preparation session for Earth Day. Students worked feverishly in groups this afternoon to prepare their activities for Monday’s event. A wide variety of ideas was explored.
What Earth Day issues affect India? How could I make a difference?
As we continue to dive deeply into the text, analyzing different aspects of the literature, wonder-filled words and writer’s craft are key.
One of our tasks will be to solve and create anagrams. Anagrams are words or phrases created by rearranging the letters in other words or phrases. They can be related or unrelated.
For example: The letters in L-I-S-T-E-N can be rearranged to spell S-I-L-E-N-T.
This anagram happens to be a set of related words because when you listen, you are silent.
Another example is the word A-N-A-G-R-A-M. These letters can be rearranged to make the phrase NAG A RAM. The letters in the word have been rearranged to make a phrase. This anagram is, obviously, not related.
To learn more and see additional examples, watch the following video.
Like anagrams, palindromes provide another way to play with the STRUCTURE of words or phrases.
Scholarly Challenge: Find and post examples of anagrams and palindromes in the padlet below. As an extra scholarly challenge, try to create your own.
We will also be discussing “the best figure of speech hands down: hyperbole”. Well, maybe that’s a bit of an overstatement, but that’s the point. Hyperbole is meant to be an exaggeration.
Check out the video below to learn more about hyperbole and to take an opportunity to practice.
Don’t forget to add some of your own examples to our figurative language Padlet.
Since our central idea for our unit is related to STRUCTURE, poetry is a perfect genre to explore as writers. After reflecting on Koly and the events in Homeless Bird so far, we will communicate some of our thinking through the writing of quatrain poems. As you will learn in the following video, one of the elements of a quatrain poem is that it is about a specific subject, we will be able to highlight a big idea or theme from the first chapter.
Finally, some of your work this week will require you to think about text STRUCTURES, specifically sequential or chronological text STRUCTURE.We can use this STRUCTURE to think about Koly’s wedding.
The following video is great because is ties into some ideas explored in our last unit on struggle and survival, explains sequential text STRUCTURE, and highlights brain-crossing strategies that help grow neurons! Whoa! (Oh… how might the growing of neurons relate to STRUCTURE? Hmmm…)
Sequential (a.k.a. Chronological)
Preview
Throughout our reading and analysis of Homeless Bird, we will be learning about these other text STRUCTURES, as well.
Today was the day we’d all been waiting for… finally beginning to read our new novel – Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan!
After reviewing STRUCTURES students established for their groups, they were ready to jump in to chapter 1.
Students set fluency, expression, comprehension, and reflection goals and put forth tremendous effort to achieve them. Engagement was high and thinking scholarly.
Today, we also dug deeper into division by discussing and dappling with a variety of strategies. As you explore each strategy, think about which one is most efficient and effective. Also, really think about which strategy helps you understand the concept of division most deeply.
With only 41 days remaining until we become fifth grade scholars, independence, initiative, and insightful inquiry are areas in which we are desiring to demonstrate readiness for the rigor that awaits. As we stepped into our new unit of inquiry on the sustenance of structure, we were ready to shine.
Working in their table groups, students began the day by establishing a structure for their group. Students discussed and established expectations for how they will read, write, speak, and think. In each group, the standards for success were high.
Once the structure was set, students were introduced to the document that will help guide their novel study. Strategically structured, the document is designed to promote independence, initiative, and inquiry. Our first activity, though, was a guided visible thinking routine – creativity hunt. With our central idea of structure in mind, our challenge was to consider an ordinary object from a different perspective. Our object was… a pencil. As we thought about this everyday object, we really exercised our brains and had a rich discussion about a pencil’s purpose, audience, and unique design and structure.
If you are interested, you can push your thinking about pencils further by reading an article featured on the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) website entitled “I, Pencil,” by Leonard E. Read. It’s worth the read! You won’t believe how many people it takes to make a single pencil.
After analyzing a pencil, students read a brief biography of our author and put into practice our first reading skill – predicting. Based on a synopsis of our text, Homeless Bird, students recorded ideas using what they know about the author, Gloria Whelan, and prior knowledge of books we’ve read by her.
Then it was time to delve into the dictionaries, previewing some new vocabulary words that will be sprinkled throughout the first chapter. Students showed how scholarly they were by using multiple sources, including traditional and online dictionaries. Each group eagerly embraced the challenge with an exciting level of enthusiasm, engagement, and excellence.
As we inquired into our new topic and text, our work was nothing short of amazing!
The best part is… the excellence was extended into our math lesson about… division. Division is an always-anticipated aspect of fourth grade math. Today, we used what we knew about multiples, fractions, and area to lay the foundation of our thinking and problem solving. Attentive and active during the lesson, scholars were ready to show what they know when it came time to work with a thinking buddy.
Alert: As you watch the previous video, what is one REALLY important math idea we, as math-magicians, know about extended facts that this video is missing. In other words, what is the mathematical reason why we can use basic facts to help us with extended facts? If giving feedback to the creator of this video, I would encourage her to revise her thinking about how the extended facts are formed.
The following image features extended facts for addition, but the creator of this image understands the secret to extended facts. Can you see his or her evidence?
We are looking forward to digging deeper into division tomorrow with specific division strategies.
