Is that a Wyatt or is it a beaver?
This week…
In our study of Texas Regions we turned back from the deserts and mountains of the West, back across the Great plains, Hill country, and Blackland prairies to arrive in East Texas where we discovered…woods! Piney woods! In this primarily flat land of nutrient-filled soil from eons of flooding and receding waters, we find an ecosystem filled with trees, rivers, and thousands of oxbow lakes. This rich landscape supports a huge variety of flora and fauna. Creatures we haven’t met in other regions live there such as alligators, beavers, river otters, and little woodcocks, to name a few.
We took a day to take a more in-depth look at what beavers are like and how important they are to forest environments. With their orange teeth that have the strength of iron they are able to utilize trees to create the ponds in which they live. At our team tables we worked like beavers to build dams. Our goal was to make them sturdy enough to hold the water from the “river”. It was a good ‘ole mess of mud and sticks, and grasses – just like beavers use. Our teams proved that we are good dam builders!
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We were ecosystem builders creating a diorama of East Texas including rivers, forest floor, hardwoods, loblolly pines and even spanish moss hanging down from the bald cypress trees that thrive in Caddo lake and near rivers.
We grew from the forest floor to…
full on Piney Woods! Can you find the beaver dam and lodge?
Animals to be added after they dry!
In Math…
Ms. Kim’s Mathletes are beginning to learn about 3D shapes. We tried to explain the difference between a square and a cube – it wasn’t as easy as it sounds! Alphas sure knew how they were built. We built some in hopes of learning how to verbalize their differences.
Landon used 6 squares to build his cube!
Adeline’s was solid, but it too had 6 squares that were equal-ish in length, width, AND height!
We played a fun addition/subtraction game using shapes – we couldn’t get enough of it!
Alphas discovered new ways to see things when we did a “dot talk” as we figured out how many dots were on the whiteboard. Some students figured out the total by counting one dot at a time; other students saw 2 here, and 4 there, and could add those numbers together to reach the total…We practiced writing equations with them too!
Ms. Eliza’s Math Wizards started our geometry study…we each had a 4.5 inch by 4.5 inch square that we folded 4 times. One fold down the center and four folds from the corners. Our challenge was to see how many different shapes we could make using just these fold lines. We discovered we could make a variety of polygons with 3, 4, 5, and 6 sides!
We started more advanced addition using double digits and place value knowledge . 25 +3, 17+2, etc.
In ELA…
Ms. Eliza’s group reviewed short e cvc words. The sight words we added to our list were here and are. We reviewed our previous words, wrote cvc animal names, and wrote our first poems independently! Our first poems were about foods we like. We finished a fairy tale we read over several days…the tale of Hansel and Gretel! AND holy cow…did they outfox the witch! We have we become great reading partners for one another.
Ms. Kim’s Mad Poet Society WOW. Last week’s poems were so cool! We never got to share them in class, but we look forward to doing that next week! This week we read a story about the concept of “wabi sabi.” Poets often bring to light the beauty in things that initially seemed ordinary. Poets also have fun with form. We tried our hand at using a “diamante” form to write a poem honoring something most people barely ever think about…you know, like pencils, old stuffed animals, and wild cheetahs and stuff.
Part of using the diamante form required some knowledge of grammar – specifically nouns, verbs, and adjectives – which fit right in with our spelling work this week: glued sounds “ing” !
& In Other News…
IN STEAM…our challenge was to make a boat that can float out of paper and tape!
We came up with some strong designs in canoe shapes, rafts, and little dorries.
Some of us tested our design strength by putting pennies in to add a little weight and they held up!
Ms Kim was out on Thursday so we joined together for math and ELA. In math we learned about gathering information by surveying one another. We started with ice cream flavors we liked the most. We took that information to discuss how the data might help us if we ran an ice cream shop. Then partners worked to create their own surveys and interviewed one another. We then graphed our data and presented it to one another.
We also had a few minutes to have a “Shoe Talk”. We practiced listening to one another as we told why we picked the shoes we were wearing on Thursday. We came back to our big circle to share what we learned and how well the speaker felt others listened to them. Alphas have cool shoes!
