Classroom update April 22nd

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Classroom update: April 22, 2019

I hope you enjoyed your April vacation!

The kids are doing such a great job with poetry. They have enjoyed writing some "template" poems where some of the words and structure were provided, but they had the opportunity to put their own creative spin on it as well. It was amazing to see the different ideas the children came up with. Finally, we will create a "Table of Contents" and illustrate their  Poetry Books. The children will be bringing their books home at the end of the school year.

This week, we began to talk about “thin” and “thick” questions to kick off our informational writing unit!  We created a set of “thick” questions, which we will be focusing on during our research.  For this unit, the students will research a country of their ancestors and write informational paragraphs. These paragraphs will eventually be used to create a wonderful book about their country!

Our reading groups will be focusing on reading "twin texts." Which means two books about the same topic, but one is fiction and the other is non-fiction. Once both books have been read and discussed, we will compare and contrast them. 

During math, we finished up Unit 7 and have started Unit 8, which focuses on Geometry and Arrays. In this first couple of lessons, the children explored 2-and 3-dimensional shapes and their attributes. They enjoyed playing a game called "Shape Capture" where they used shape attributes to "capture" shapes. We also enjoyed building various polygons and comparing their attributes. Children learned many new vocabulary words to describe the shapes: vertices, angles, parallel sides, sides, face, edges, and bases.

The children enjoyed learning about Antarctica the last two weeks for our Around the World unit.  We learned about all different types of penguins! After vacation, we will begin to learn about the continent of South America. This will be the last stop of our Around the World trip!

Upcoming Events:

April 24th: 5th Grade Chorus Concert for 2nd Grade @ JAC

Monday, April 29th: Parents Receive Placement Parent-Input Forms

Monday, May 6th: Due Date for Placement Parent-Input Forms