To help with sentence structure, we have been exploring the different parts of speech. During reading groups, parents read books about nouns, verbs, adjectives, pronouns, homophones, and synonyms. Then students made posters to show their understanding of the part of speech their group was assigned. Students were excited to present their poster and share their […]
I used to think…but now I know…
We are often constructing meaning with the information we are exposed to each day. To help students become more aware of how their thinking changes, we made I used to think…but now I know…bridges. We will be using this understanding throughout the year to help students grow in awareness of their learning.
THRASS
THRASS stands for the Teaching of Handwriting Reading and Spelling Skills. This is a tool that we use at ISM to help of students become both skilled readers and writers. Alongside this resource, our class will also be discussing various reading and spelling strategies during the year. Why Do We Use THRASS? with Denise Ritchie (developer of THRASS) […]
Marshmallow Challenge
To help deepen students’ understanding of what it means to collaborate, they were grouped into 3/4s and were given the following task: Your challenge is to build the tallest freestanding structure using only sticks of spaghetti and the different sized marshmallows provided for you. Students had a blast completing the challenge and reflected afterwards about what did […]
Caring/Empathy
After a discussion about caring, we read the story Stand in My Shoes by Bob Sornson. We then discussed how empathy is related to caring. They were then showed the short video clip below. There were lots of laugh, but also lots of light bulbs turning on! Then each pair of students were given a paper heart. Students shared […]
Brave Explorers’ Classroom Agreements
This week, we have been discussing the various communities we are a part of such as our classroom community and our school community. In every community are expected behaviors so things run smoothly. Our school community has three basic rules which are be Safe, Responsible and Respectful. After brainstorming, students came up with lots of […]
Creative Use of Polygons
After having inquired into various types of polygons, students discovered how shapes are all around us. Everything has a form/shape. One student wondered why most of shapes around us are rectangular. So then individually or in pairs, they creatively used various polygons to make their own 2-D structures. They had lots of fun using their […]
Author’s Visit
As part of our unit of study, we had the pleasure of having a local author, Robert Magnuson, visit our class today. He was able to share some of his inspirations for writing his books and comics. Then students had a chance to use their imagination and creativity to make up their own comic characters. […]
Comparing and Contrasting Types of Literature
Using the book they found in the library, students compared and contrasted features of various genres. They worked in pairs and used a Venn Diagram to organize their thinking. To help further their language development, they used sentence frames as they discussed the similarities and differences they found. These are some of their discoveries: “Novels […]