First Skype...

Well, today ended a little crazy but we had a great start! We are getting really secure with our Math 4 Today and getting it completed in a more timely manner...which allowed us to begin Writer's Workshop earlier, which meant more time with our NEW LEGO StoryStarters! We have been working with persuasive/opinion writing so today, they were given the following ideas to set the scene. The city council wanted to chop down a giant fig tree in a town. However, the people of the town were very against this for a variety of reasons and had begun a protest to keep the tree. They have to develop multiple characters and character's points of view to persuade the council to keep the tree. We also learned about a counter claim today and so they needed to make sure to have a counter claim represented. At the end of workshop, we didn't feel that our ideas were developed enough so we will be revisiting this again tomorrow. Be sure to check out pics posted on our twitter page @ADE4thGrade! Students played volleyball in gym and then we got to find out more about Jonas' new "assignment" in The Giver. At the end of the chapter, the current Receiver of Memories began with Jonas to give him a memory of snow-this being something Jonas has never heard of! As always, they got so upset when I quit reading. In Reader's Workshop, we worked with vocabulary from this month's StoryWorks. You may hear your kiddo using some of these new words around the house! We froze outside for recess but then began our second day with fractions in Math Workshop. Students were doing really well with understanding equivalent fractions and what fractions are. We cut our workshop a little short so that we could have our first Mystery Skype run through practice! They did pretty well. However, we do have a lot to still work on. If anyone has Skype and would like to participate in another practice with us, let me know! You'd have to make up a place and answer yes/no questions about this place and then ask us yes/no questions about where we are to try and figure out where we are while we are trying to figure out your location. (Example questions: Are you North of the Equator? Are you on the continent of North America? Is your school East of the Mississippi? etc.)