Hello Families and Students,
This morning we talked a good deal about our homework from last night, as well as expanded form and different forms of a number. We discussed how numbers can be put into different forms in order to make performing certain operations or doing certain things easier.
We had the opportunity to extend this conversation when we went to lunch. Today was Miguel’s birthday (Happy birthday Miguel!) and he brought in some fruit punch and some cupcakes for all of us to share. He brought in 3 boxes of 10 fruit pouches. THREE TENS!!! I was so excited. However in their current form (3 boxes of 10) we couldn’t share the fruit punches. Mrs. Steidl, Mrs. Day, and I told the students we only had 3 tens, so we could only share it between the three of us. As we walked off, the students began screaming “ungroup them!!!” “ungroup them!!!” I was so proud.
Tonight students have some work to do with expanded and other forms. We took some notes on this, and everyone seemed to be doing wonderfully.
A quick note on homework: Students are rarely given more than 30 minutes of homework to do each night. If students focus and follow directions (this means looking at their examples and their notes to aid them) they should be through with their work quite quickly. Students not finishing homework or not following directions will lose time for other things (celebrations, fun activities, etc) and will instead finish the homework they have missed. This has been my policy for quite some time, and I do not think it unreasonable. We have had the majority of students doing a great job with their work, but some students who have been trying to simply get the homework looking as if it were finished as quickly as possible and turned in. These students have lost their own time by having to do and redo their work until it is correct. Today a student became extremely upset when they had to redo their homework. I am upfront with students about this policy. If you have any questions or concerns about it please e-mail me at jpotter3@wcpss.net.
Our Language Arts discussion today centered on settings. We read the opening of a few books and looked at how authors introduce us to their setting. They often focus on the senses:
What does it look like?
What does it sound like?
What does it smell like?
What does it feel like?
And sometimes even: What does it taste like?
As we are writing our own stories (and we’ll write plenty of them) we will often begin by focusing on our setting. We want to ensure our readers can create a picture in their heads of what is going on in our writing.
Tonight students have a short story to write for me. They should focus on a small event or moment in their lives that they remember well. They should first think about where and when this happened, and fill out a graphic organizer to help them organize their thoughts around how they will describe their setting.
Once this organizer is finished, they should write their story for me. We talked about including details that make it possible for the reader to picture the action in their head.
Their story should be written in their writing journals, which they were asked to take home today.
Next we did a fun little maze activity. Ask your student about how their team did. Students had to use trial and error to move through a grid on the floor that was actually a maze. If they made a wrong step, Mr. Potter gave them a buzz to let them know it was incorrect. Then the next person got to try again, learning from the mistake of the person in front of them.
The whole point of the exercise was that we are almost never going to get something right the first time unless we’re just lucky. That’s ok. We try new things, and we learn from our mistakes. Making mistakes is ok. If Mr. Potter points out a mistake, he doesn’t hate you, and he’s not angry with you. He’s simply trying to point you in the right direction. Our groupmates can also help us with this, and we should all be learning from each other. That’s a lot of allusion for one activity!
Finally, we spent some time talking about plants, the parts of a plant, how seeds form, and how seeds germinate.
We watched this neat little video:
And then took some notes on plant parts. We played a little game where students had to match up the plant parts with their definitions/functions. It was pretty hilarious because students kept getting a correct match, and then moving the match to an incorrect match. However we finally got them all correct!
so, tl;dr
base 10 sheet – different forms
Write a story about an event/moment in your life you remember well. Start off by filling out a graphic organizer to ensure you open up with a good description of the setting:
And read (reading log too)!
Not too much, eh?
Have a good one,
-Mr. Potter
BIG P.S.: Tomorrow is Friday. In Mr. Potter’s classroom that means quiz day. We take a small battery of quizzes covering everything we touched on during the week, and sometimes even things we did weeks ago. Tomorrow’s quizzes will be on Story elements, reading comprehension, base 10, forms of numbers, and plant parts. Just a heads up!
If students were to look in their journals and then look at the quizzes tomorrow, they might be VERY surprised to see some striking similarities…..