Guest Reader for Read Across America Week

This week we have been celebrating Read Across America week.

We had a special guest reader...my daughter, Ellie!

Combinations for Ten Mini-Inquiry

Today we did a mini-inquiry to try and find all eleven possible combinations for ten.

Here is a great video showing the combinations to 10.



Stay tuned for our tens family weddings!

Odd/Even

In math workshop we are learning about odd and even numbers.
We used our rekenreks to determine if a number was even or odd.  If the top and bottom could match up with no leftovers, the number is even.  If the top and bottom have a leftover after matching up, the number is odd.  Can you tell which of these is even or odd?

We kept track of numbers that we tested.

Do you see a pattern?

Powwow

This afternoon people from our local Menominee tribe visited our school and taught us about powwows.  It was a beautiful and fun afternoon!
We were so proud and excited to see our Chance and his family dance in the powwow in their regalia!

We are so proud that you are in Room 408 with us, Chance!

The whole school got to get involved and loved dancing in the powwow, too!
Waewaenen!

Safety Drill

We had our second safety drill.  A few months ago we did our first safety drill and practiced hiding in our classroom.
Today, we practiced another ALICE drill.  ALICE stands for Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, and Evacuate.
We read our ALICE book, again.

This time, our ALICE drill was about confusing any potential intruder.  We talked about how it is a good idea to confuse an intruder by throwing things, running in zig-zag in the classroom, and yelling.

We colored an activity sheet to remind us about things we could grab and throw.

Then, we wadded up our coloring sheets.  Later that day we practiced throwing things at a pretend "intruder" while running in zig-zags and yelling to confuse our pretend intruder.

Room 408 did a good job staying calm and following directions!

Africa Mini-Inquiry

Each year Hillcrest/LEADS has Culture Day.  Each classroom chooses a culture to study, and Room 408 chose Africa.

We immersed ourselves in sources about Africa and recorded our learning.

We recorded our facts on data sheets.

We loved sharing our learning with each other!

We especially loved reading the Anansi tales...stories about the trickster spider in African tales.

We also read a book about the places, people, animals, and life in Africa.

An eye-opening book was definitely The Water Princess by Susan Verde.

We realized that many people in our world do not have access to water.

Here is the story behind the book.

Here is a read aloud video of the book. 

Next, we each chose a flag of an African country to post on our classroom door.

What cultures have you experienced?

Personal Practice Math Tubs

We started our personal practice math tubs.
These tubs are filled with activities to work on our math fluency.  We are particularly loving our number rolls and playing "Guess My Number" with a partner.

We will keep adding activities to our personal practice math tubs through the end of the year!

Word Detective Missions

We started a new unit in reading workshop called Word Detectives.  We are doing training missions to help us earn our word detective badges.

One of our first missions was looking closely across a tricky word.  A strategy that helped us a lot was writing the tricky word.  Often this made us notice parts of the word that we already knew.

We also had a mission to think about what makes a good reading partner.  After brainstorming our ideas, we practiced them with our reading partner.  A big one we're learning is to teach our partner when we get to a tricky word, not just tell them the word.  We are all helping our partner's brains grow!

Lincoln & Maddin, using *everything* they know about solving tricky words.

We're well on our way toward earning our badges!