Persistence Puzzles, Capacity Conversions, and Meaningful Monologues

Jumpstart:  Content and Vocabulary Building

Today's Jumpstart cycled back to studying more Greek and Latin Roots as a tool for decoding and extending vocabulary.  Students considered the following roots and clues to make deeper vocabulary connections.  Give them a try!

 

Pentomino Persistence Puzzles:  Confidence Building, Critical Thinking, and Growth Mindset

We wrapped up our series on "The Dip" and having a reflecting attitude.  We also worked through a persistence activity with critical thinking pentomino puzzles.  Students were asked to create a 6 in. x 10 in. rectangle using all of their pentomino puzzle pieces.  Several configurations were possible. 

Tajaye shares her persistence reflection.:)

Capacity Conversions:  Content, Critical Thinking, & Collaboration

In math we viewed this video to serve as an animated resource for our customary capacity conversions. Students then worked in groups on our "Party Time" challenge problem.  With the prompt of serving two cups of lemonade to each of their 36 guests, they came up with as many ways as possible to create the 72 cups needed with different combinations of capacity units. We didn't get to test our "cup combinations" today, but we will pick up with the experimental portion of our lesson during our next class.

Meaningful Monologues:  Content, Creativity, & Communication

Monologues was the theme of the day for our ELA content.  Students continued with their Reader's Theater experience and focused on solo performances using expression to highlight the feelings of their character.  Students will perform their selected monologue during our next class.  A monologue from the perspective of a medieval character will also be one of their choices when creating their own scripts for our project.

Medieval Times Project:  Content and Creative Innovation

Students continued to complete their Coat of Arms from last week.  Many moved ahead to their choice innovation of creating a Medieval Advertisement for Weaponry (Hear Ye! Hear Ye!) or a Minstrel Song for a Knighthood Ceremony.  Creativity at its finest!

Word Scrambles, Coat of Arms, and Volume (not for your ears)

Our Jumpstart today was a classic word scramble.  Students used their prior knowledge together with some decoding skills to uncover our mystery vegetable names.  How well can you solve our scrambles?

Students were hard at work on our medieval times projects.  Students continued their investigation of knights, armor, and weapons.  They then chose symbols of heraldry to represent themselves on the battlefield by creating their own Coat of Arms.  

Work in Progress- Coat of Arms

Next week they will also choose between writing their own minstrel song or creating an advertisement for the medieval equipment they studied.


Students experienced yet another format of "Reader's Theater" today.  Teams practiced  and performed different "To Tell The Truth" game show scripts and presented them to the class.  We are focused on fluency and projection and also learned some interesting facts about Harriet Tubman and J.K. Rowling!  Students may select from several formats, including "To Tell The Truth",  when creating their own Medieval Times reader's theater script and production.  

"To Tell The Truth- Harriet Tubman"  Rehearsal

Sneak Peek of the J.K. Rowling performance!

We also continued our discovery of M3 Math- Measurement for Me by introducing Volume.  Of course, we discussed the specific volume used for measuring how much something can hold as Capacity.:)  Students chose one of the two graphic organizers to serve as a resource throughout the next few lessons.  Today we began "Let's Make Lemonade" and quickly learned that a classroom full of students and a few adults would drink many cupfuls of lemonade.  Next week, we will look more deeply into capacity conversions.

We're baaaaack and Collaboration Abounds!!

Collaboration was a major focus for us today in our development of the 6Cs.  Students had several opportunities to further hone their collaboration skills through class activities in small groups and partner work.

We also began the day with Content exploration through our Jumpstart by taking a closer look at common Greek and Latin Prefixes and clues.  Give it a try to see if you can outsmart our "SPARK" thinkers.

Mindset Moment
For our mindset moment, we referred back to our discussion of "The Dip" and looked at reflecting on mistakes as a helpful strategies for moving forward.  Students then submitted their ideas for activities we could do in class to help us practice overcoming the dip.

Medieval Times PBL
We made progress on our medieval times projects by wrapping up the fair or festival invitations we began last week as we studied castle life and celebrations.    Students created amazing invitations. We will work to make them more authentic with tea-stained paper next week.

This week we also began to look at the popular topics of knights, armor, and weapons.  Students are collaborating on a Google Slides Presentation by working in small groups to create a way to share the most important information from their highlighted chapter.  

Students also had the chance to collaborate with partners to create a replica of the popular medieval weapon catapult.  Check out their work and excitement below.:)
                                 

The Power of YET!

Today we finished our second round of analogy Jumpstarts for our morning warm-up. We also stretched our brains with a "word work" activity by creating as many words as possible from the word confidence. How many words can you create? (3 or more letters, no names, and no abbreviations) We created 23 in 8 minutes.:)

We dug a little deeper into finding the area of irregular shapes in The Measurement in Me Math curriculum.  Students are becoming more comfortable with decomposing/partitioning and using the area formula to calculate square units.  They did really well on our challenge problem and finding lengths based on other given measurements.

Today during our Mindset Moment, we viewed a short video clip from Wondergrove learning where the characters Moby and Katy discover the power of YET!  Today's discussion and questions asked students to be reflective about their own experiences with fear of asking for help when encountering a problem task or struggle, the appropriate response when needed help, and understanding the great power contained in the small word YET!  Students responded to discussion questions in their journals and completed a "think, pair, share" exercise with two different classmates.  

• Why is the word ”yet” so powerful? Think of a ”yet” moment in your life and discuss it with your neighbor!
• Ask your student to share their "YET" moment with you and discuss the power of the word.:)

We also exercised our critical thinking skills during a fast and furious game to solve the "Daily Set Puzzle".  Madelyn was the first to find all 6 sets this week.  Who will be next?

                              

                                             Madelyn perseveres to complete the Daily Set puzzle from setpuzzle.com.

We ended the day with a brief workshop in their Medieval Times Lapbooks and discussion of Chapter 3- Protecting the Castle in our Knights and Castles Magic Tree House Fact Finder book.  Students then chose to create a castle diagram or vocabulary matching game to highlight the vital components needed to keep the occupants safe.

Deconstruction Tuesday

Today our Jumpstart brought us back to our strategy of creating bridge sentences for completing analogies.  We are looking at types of relationships and considered opposites, degree, functions, type, and lack.  Try a few examples from today's challenge and ask your student if your answer is correct.:) 

For our Mindset Moment, students watched a short Wondergrove video where they were introduced to Mojo and his discovery about what challenges can do for his brain as he struggled to build a successful rocket.  We also considered the following questions regarding growth mindset...

• What does it feel like when something is too challenging? Is it wrong that we feel this way?

• What kind of attitude should we take on when facing a challenge, and why is that important?

• When taking on a challenge, it's okay to ask for help or to take a break to reflect, like Mojo did! Does this mean we aren't growing our brain anymore?

In Math today we continued in our study of area where students discovered that figures with the same area can have a very different shape. They were able to find as many different ways as possible to draw an irregular shape with an area of 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17 or 19 square centimeters on grid paper.  We then worked on partitioning and deconstructing those figures into rectangles and squares and writing number sentence equations using L x W to show the area for each portion and add to find the total area in square centimeters.  Your student may challenge you to complete this process with an unused object from our lesson.  Happy Deconstructing!:)

We were excited to continue part 2 of our Medieval Times project today.  Students broke ground on our book study of Knights and Castles by Mary Pope Osborne last week, completed a Medieval timeline, and continued construction on their lapbook castles!

Word Nerd and Area Adventures

Today we began by helping decode some of the Word Nerd's fancy sentences using our knowledge of Greek and Latin roots.  We also used our growth mindset and persistence to work around portions of the sentence until we made useful vocabulary connection.  Next week, we will work on writing our own misadventures.

For math, we embarked on Chapter 2 and a deeper study of area.  We looked at irregular shapes and strategies for calculating the space they cover.  Students traced their "fried eggs" and estimated the surface area, piecing together fragments to make whole square units, finding larger regular rectangles within the shape to use the formula for finding area, A= length x width,  as a short cut, and counting the remaining whole squares for the total area.

Our class model

Student created model

Medieval Times Project Based Learning Kick Off!

 This week was bursting with excitement and engaging activities!  We began with a word ladder for  our morning Jumpstart.  Our word work and vocabulary connections are growing with each Jumpstart activity we complete.  Next, I introduced our new Medieval Times projects and we got in the spirit with some middle ages activities!  First, students created their own Knight helmets with aluminum foil which provided challenges in problem solving and creativity.  There were definitely some creative thinkers at work!  Then we 'mounted our horses' to compete in a jousting tournament.  We had some pretty impressive lance wielders!  We began our discovery and discussion of the types of transportation and protection used in the Middle Ages.  Wrapping up the day, students navigated an online investigations of castles through Nearpod, chose their knightly names, and began their Chess sketchbooks by completing 'The Pawn' entry.    

"Medieval Times Lancing Champions"