Week of February 13, 2017

Kate's Global Citizenship artwork.

Highlights from Last Week:

We played Greek and Latin Root Word Jeopardy. Student teams used their list of root words to come up with vocabulary and define words. The Thursday group (Ellie, Jacob, Isaiah, and Thomas B) emerged victorious.

Students did an amazing job on their Global Citizenship Part 1 projects. They shared some of their work, inspiring and informing the rest of the class --and me! It was wonderful to have hope for the future reignited through the compassion and concern students show for humanity and the planet.

In Social Studies, I read aloud from A History of US, which gives an in-depth and engaging history of the United States. We read an amazingly dense history of the world and learned how a "cultural stew" and "idea pool" helped to make the U.S. the way it is today.


What We Didn't Get To:
A snow day, while delightful, didn't help our progress through my plans last week. Here is what we missed:

• The informational writing launch. Our Greek and Latin root words activity took way longer than I anticipated.
• We still didn't get as far as I wanted to in informational reading. Instead, I added a lesson on determining theme in informational text.
• Colonization in Social Studies. We spent some time looking at a general history of the world and how that connects to America.
• In math, I didn't get to teach the kiddos my second game, "Bet on Equivalence."

This Week's Plan

Just found out --Snow Day on Monday! This will likely affect the plans below. Nevertheless, I'll still push to cover them.

Upcoming Special Events: ​​​

• Early Release Wednesday.
• Valentine's' Day: Tuesday. Students may bring in Valentine's for classmates, but if they do so, they should consider giving one to every member of the class so that no one feels left out.
• February Break: Next week! School resumes Monday, February 27th.

Special Activities:
None that I can think of right now (I'm often spontaneous, though). 

Math:
Fraction Addition and Subtraction.

• Equivalent Fractions --I have a fun game to practice making equivalent fractions.
• Adding and Subtracting Fractions --We'll learn the steps to add and subtract fractions with like and unlike denominators, then practice simplifying our answers.
• Mixed Number Borrowing --This is a fun technique to subtract fractions when you don't have a large enough fraction. We'll borrow from the whole.

Reading:
Book Groups. Informational Text Reading.

• Book Groups --Students continue their book group work on summarizing, questioning, critically thinking, and discussing.
• Structure Informational Text --We'll look at a variety of ways to structure informational texts, such as topic/detail, compare/contrast, cause/effect, and sequence/narrative.
• Explicit and Implicit Meaning  --Students will find evidence and use quotes accurately to support their thinking about what the text says and means.

Writing:
Begin Informational Writing.

• On-Demand Informational Writing --After students conduct research, they will write a short informational piece about their chosen topic. This will help me know what to focus on in our Informational Writing unit.
• Strategies for Choosing a Topic and Taking Notes ​--We'll learn how to using questioning to develop an informational topic with a specific focus. We'll also learn about a notetaking strategy I call "categories," where students organize notes based on overarching topic categories.

Social Studies:
Colonial America.
I'll introduce Colonial America through a read aloud of A History of US by Joy Hakim and other texts. We'll use our informational reading skills to practice finding explicit and implicit meaning. We'll explore answers to the following questions:

• What is colonization and why do people colonize?
• What were the first colonies of America like?

Science:
We switch to Social Studies.

Homework:
Please check the Homework page for more details.

1. There is no new Homework Project this week.
2. Students will write back to their partners on Blog #7 by Friday.
3. Read 25 minutes at home per day and log the title, author, and time in the planner.
4. There will be a math page for homework each night.

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Thanks for Reading!
That's the plan for the week. Please feel free to email me with any questions, comments, or feedback.