Book Clubs

For the past week, we have had 4 book clubs going in our classroom. This has been an amazing experience for the children. They have loved every minute! All the books have a unique storyline with one commonality, helping them change their perspective and make them more compassionate about a topic.

King Cotton

Room 303 has hopped in a time machine and is exploring what life was like from the perspective of two children, one a plantation owner's daughter and a slave.

We started our lesson by identifying the meaning of 'perspective' which means how a character thinks or feels about a particular topic. Next, the students had the opportunity to observe a cotton boll and record their observations. Many students described the cotton as soft and fluffy. After the students recorded their observations, we read the first 2 pages of Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. We learned that Clara was a child slave in the cotton field.

The students learned more about slaves in the cotton fields in our stations.

The students analyzed pictures at "Table Top Twitter".

They read diary entries from Sarah, the daughter of a plantation owner....

and a conversation between two slaves.

The students listened to recordings of voices of real slaves during the time of the Civil War on Ed Puzzle.

After each students has visited all the stations, we will observe the cotton again to see if they feel something different this time.

We know reading can not only make us smarter, but also more compassionate on topics that we do not know a lot about.

Stay tuned to read if these stations changed how we think and feel about a topic.

Native American PowerPoint Presentstions

Our friends are creating their first PowerPoint presentations to share their knowledge of the Catawba, Cherokee, and Yemassee Tribes with the class.

Meet Amelia and King

The day finally arrived after weeks of planning! You would think that I won a $500 shopping spree to one of my favorite stores. Although that would be AMAZING.... 

We are learning about two sweet Loggerhead Sea Turtles that were rescued along our coastline. The sea turtles were transported to the Sea Turtle Rescue Center in Charleston, SC. They have since been treated and released.

The students are learning more about Amelia and King in our Daily 5 Stations, again, using our Blended Learning approach. The students are completing a "Sea Turtle Hospital Doctor Form". They will use this form to add facts to their Literary Nonfiction piece on Life as a Sea Turtle.

We would love to share their stories with you. Please click on the BlendSpace Link below.

Amelia and King 

Physical and Behavioral Adaptations

This week started our PBL Unit "From Turtles to Tigers". Our driving question is "How do animals adapt to changes in their environment?"

From the wise words of Kid President, "If you want to change the world, you gotta know about it." Therefore, we must first learn what adaptation means and the two types of adaptations. The students are using the Blended Learning approach in our Daily 5 Stations to learn at their own pace what adaptation means and determining the two types, physical and behavioral. This is multi-tasking at its finest. While the students are learning on the computers and ipads, I have the opportunity to work with another group of students in a small group setting on their reading goal.

After everyone has had the opportunity to visit the Technology Station, we will go over our Adaptation Charts.

Never heard of BlendSpace? No worries! I just learned about it at the beginning of the school year. Check out the BlendSpace we created and are using in Daily 5 this week!

Adaptations

Click on the hyperlink above and simply click the play button on the left side of the web page.

Something to Tweet (and blog) About!

Our Crew is visiting www.wonderopolis.org in their Daily 5 Stations. We are focusing on how to research about animals we are interested in learning more about. The students performed this research independently and recorded 1-2  facts on their Twitter Page! Enjoy!

Identifying the Main Idea and Supporting Details

The students are enjoying Daily 5 Stations! Currently, we are focusing on reading informational articles . We are learning how to identify the meanings of words using the context, identifying main idea and supporting details, and also writing reflections on the articles. This work is preparing them for our upcoming PBL. We will 'adopt' a species to research and raise awareness on "How people affect Animals", specifically their habitats and as a result, adaptations.
Continue to follow this as we become activists and a voice for the animals that cannot speak for themselves.


Our reading test has been postponed until next week. We will be ready to test next Friday, September 19th.
Below is an example of the passage the students are reading to identify main idea. There will be a similar passage on the test.


Main Idea Practice

Finding Character Traits and Evidence in a Passage

Today we practiced finding character traits and supporting evidence in a cold read passage. The students will have a similar assignment on the test. Your child has a copy of this in their reading journal.
They can practice reading the passage, finding the traits, and evidence in the following passages.
African American Newsmakers

The students practiced their regions today by singing our Regions song with hand motions. Enjoy!

Have a great afternoon! Tomorrow is Friday, but today is Game Day... Go Gamecocks!

Finding Evidence in the Text: Jump

This is a great resource to review for the test. Your child will have this in their journal today. 

Here is a student example: 

Here is my model. (I took a picture of the computer screen) 

Character Traits

We are noticing character traits in reading this week. On Monday, we focused on Michael Jordan's traits in the text, Jump! The students noticed several traits on the Common Character Traits list; however, I had them narrow their choice down to one where they had to provide evidence from the text to support their answer.

 

Today, we read Tough Boris, written by one of my favorite authors, Mem Fox. Before reading the text, the students moved around the room to predict the trait based on the picture.

L

After this activity, we read the text together and compared our trait predictions to the text.

 

As an extension to the lesson, we "tweeted" a trait that best describes us. Check our Twitter page (located on the right) to see a few responses.