Scientists in Room 101!

  

Fundations

Students learned about making a CVC word plural:

Baseword + suffix (cvc+s) rule:

- the s at the end makes the word more than one (plural)

- sometimes the s says “s”

- sometimes the s says “z”

Sound associations:

- s, snake, “s”

- s, bugs, “z”

Glued sounds:

an, am rule:

-When the sounds are together they are “glued” and the n/m changes the sound the “a” makes.  “n” and “m” are nasal sounds and you need your nose to make the sound.  Try to make the sound holding your nose!

Sound associations:

a-n, fan, “an”

a-m, ham, “am”

all:

-the double l at the end of “all” makes the “a” sound like short “o”

Sound association:

a-l-l, ball, “all”

Reader’s Workshop, Writer’s Workshop, Science

Student’s in room 101 worked hard to make meaningful confections to help understand a story.  Patches Lost and Found by Steven Kroll served as our mentor text.  It is important for readers to make meaningful connections to enhance the comprehension of the text.

We discussed author’s voice by reading various books by Robert Munsch. Students enjoyed the humorous tone and repetitive nature of two of his books: 50 below and Purple, Green and Yellow.

Students learned and practiced 2 types of simple sentences: questions and statements.  They even learned the “high school term”, clause.

Meteorologist, Chris Lambert from News Channel 7 came in for a visit!  He discussed extreme weather and brought us behind the scenes of his job.

Students were actively engaged in a scientific investigation: Air Under Water.  Students explored vials and figured out how to make bubbles in the water.  They also discovered out how to put a paper town in the vial, submerge the vial in the water, and keep the paper towel dry!  We added new words to our word bank and had various new learnings to add to our air chart:

- Air can be trapped in a vial under water

- Air bubbles come out of the vial when you turn it sideways

- Air takes up space.  We know this because the air didn’t let any of the water in the vial

- If you submerge a vial upside down in water, the air fills up the vial so the paper towel stays dry

    

Students practiced thinking, writing and talking like scientists.  They used scientific language to make observations such as, I saw, I noticed and I observed.

Pumpkin day

For Pumpkin Day students were actively engaged in reading, writing, math and science activities throughout the day.  The highlight was the pumpkin exploration.

 Understanding Subtraction

Students in room 101 are continuing to learn how to see the many possible interpretations of a subtraction equation.  This is achieved by experiencing numerous hands-on and visually appealing lessons focused on interpreting an equation such as 8 - 5 = 3 in the following representations:

1. Missing Part:

I have 8 pencils.  If 5 are on top of my desk, how many are inside?

2. Taking away from a whole:

I had 8 pencils.  I gave my sister 5.  How many do I have left?

3. Comparing Quantities:

I have 8 pencils.  My brother has 5 pencils.  How many more do I have?

We spent the past 2 weeks focusing on Taking away from a whole and Comparing Quantities.

This is challenging concept and will be worked on throughout the month of November.  Next week students will work with word problems reviewing all 3 interpretations.  As these skills are mastered students will learn that addition and subtraction are inverse operations.  Students will participate in multi-modal problem solving acivities to attain these higher order-thinking skills.

On Friday Veterans joined Winn Brook for a beautiful Veterans Day concert put on by the third graders.  Josh's mom also surprised as as the Mystery Reader!

Go Red Sox!