Friday, January 13, 2012

Learning Updates 1.13.12

Happy Friday!

Here's the latest from our classroom. Monday is a holiday--Martin Luther King Jr. Day and so we'll resume school on Tuesday.

Researching & taking notes on explorers of Washington State

Presenting explorer research to the class

Taking turns writing information under the document camera so the rest of the class can record too

Communication Game. Trying to sign "fish" by wiggling silently on the ground

More sign language. Afterward, students came up with ideas for how to improve silent communication: drawing, facial expressions, props--actual things Lewis & Clark did too. What the "listeners" often heard and later reported to the class was hilarious!


Math
  • We worked more on the partial quotients division method, introduced the U.S. Traditional method of multiplication, studied degrees and angles, and practiced using a half-circle protractor
Reading
  • Read and discussed about petroleum and oil spills. Students took a quick quiz
  • Read about explorers who came to WA state
  • Continued reading and discussing Horse's Tale
Writing
  • Learned about conversational prompts (sentence stems) like "For example..." "The reason for this is..." etc. for pushing our thinking deeper
  • Looked back through our essay and narrative writing for great thoughts that could become a thesis
  • Brainstormed thesis statements and held a thesis clinic where students helped each other revise thesis statements to be stronger and more clear
Social Studies
  • Small groups read about various explorers, presented that information to the class, and we all recorded the information
  • Examined, analyzed, discussed, and responded in writing to actual explorers' journal entries from Lewis & Clark's corps of discovery group
  • Played a hilarious and fun sign language communication game--ask about this! The game simulated the difficulty of the communication between Lewis & Clark and the Native Americans they encountered