This was another full week! We started off with a flipbook about the Cartesian plane. We put graph paper on the inside to help the students remember how to graph ordered pairs.
Mrs. Arredondo, our reading coach, came in and did a lesson with us about author's purpose. We knew all about PIE (persuade, inform, and entertain) but she helped us add a few more, XN. So now we have PIEXN to help us remember the author's purpose.
In math groups this week we practiced finding surface area. The kids used Unifix cubes to build shapes and then counted the faces to calculate surface area. They found that it was difficult to keep count so they used an expo to make a mark on each face as they counted.
After our author's purpose lesson we decided to write with a purpose in mind. Each student got a doughnut (thanks to TJ)! We were in groups and each student had to pick a different purpose and write a paragraph about their doughnut. We ended up with some great papers about them.
We also finished our writing about how to blow a bubble. The kids wrote paragraphs explaining how to blow a bubble with bubble gum. Caleb read his paper to us and we all had a piece of bubble gum. We tried to blow a bubble using his directions. Some of us were successful. Thanks to Caleb for not forgetting to tell the reader to remove the wrapper from the gum.
This is our hallway display of the how to blow a bubble papers. I think they turned out really cute!
Friday we did another chemistry experiment. The kids have been using the same 6 powders and doing tests to learn about each. Today we used iodine to test for starch. If starch is present the mixture turns black. Next week we will be using the information we have gathered to test a mystery mixture of two powders. We'll see how well we have done if everyone is able to identify the mixture they are given.
I won a set of SmartPals for the classroom in Facebook from EAI Education. They came in Friday afternoon and I'm looking forward to using these with the class.
STUDENTS: We had lots of different activities going on this week. We focused on author's purpose this week. Your job this week is to write a paragraph (at least 5 sentences) about something that happened in our classroom. We will read these next week and try to guess the author's purpose. Remember, we have 2 new ones so try not to use the same purpose as someone that has already posted. What was the author's purpose for this blog post?
