Wednesday, March 11, 2009

This morning we practiced the poem, The Field Trip. We tried reading it in rounds (2 groups) like an echo. It sounded cool. After we put our new poem in our poetry journals, we saw a video about 2 vowels together. We got to sing along after watching it a few times! The second vowel does the walking and the first one does the talking.

In math, we talked about the difference between addition and subtraction. Adding is when we combine and subtraction is when we take away. Nolan remembered that in addition the answer is called the sum and in subtraction it is called the difference. Today we learned how to subtract using pictures or symbols. A bunch of us made a common mistake: adding instead of subtracting! We are all going to look really carefully to see if there is a plus sign (which tells us to add) or a minus sign (which tells us to take away).

During Reader’s Workshop we had to infer about characters. We read Strega Nona’s Magic Lessons and compared the traits we came up with yesterday (after reading Strega Nona) about the two main characters. The traits we came up with yesterday (fair and helpful) were true of her character today, just as Big Anthony’s traits (foolish, sneaky, jealous) were as well.

At music, we kept the beat and played instruments to the My Many Colored Day by Dr. Seuss. We also danced the Cha Cha Slide and the Macarena to get ready for the dance festival.

After specials we went to technology. We made stories on the computer. The box on the top was to create the picture. There were tools like a spray can, a pencil, eraser, shapes, stamps, and backgrounds. On the bottom, we started writing a story to match the picture. Darren wrote about space aliens. Kaitlyn wrote about living in Circle World. Gianluca also wrote about aliens. Axl wrote about 2 rockets about to get launched into space. We switched our Technology time so we didn’t get to Writer’s Workshop. That means that anyone who didn’t send in their artifact today still has 1 more day to bring it in. Please make sure to send in one artifact for tomorrow!

Yesterday, Mia’s tooth finally came out! Ms. Stern also got a visit from 2 of her former students from her first class of first graders. They are 12 and 13. We also observed the mealworms and recorded our observations and questions in our journals. There was lots of great thinking taking place!