March 2015

Language Arts

In Reading Workshop our focus will be biographies. This will be a return to nonfiction, but with a new structure. Students will be reading stories about real people who have done remarkable things. The reading skills that will be developed are determining importance, synthesizing, and analyzing critically.

Students will also be expanding their knowledge of homophones and analogies. Pronouns will be our language focus.

As students continue to grow as information writers, they are publishing their expert books as eBooks. They have worked hard to organize their information on their chosen topic, elaborate with interesting facts as well as big ideas, and fact check. A goal has been for students to edit as they write, but as they finish chapters they are rereading with capitals, punctuation, and spelling in mind. They will begin researching and writing rainforest animal brochures later this month. 

Mathematics

Students have been exploring area as an attribute of two-dimensional figures and relating it to their prior understandings of multiplication. They've learned that the space can be tiled with unit squares without gaps or overlaps. They've made predictions and explored which rectangles cover the most area when the side lengths differ.  Students have progressed from using square tile manipulatives to drawing their own area models and manipulating rectangular arrays to concretely demonstrate the arithmetic properties.


Students are also beginning to learn about perimeter as an attribute of plane figures, and applying their knowledge to real world situations through problem solving. They are measuring side lengths of shapes in whole number units to determine perimeter and solve problems where side lengths are given.  They will use string and rulers to measure the length around circles of different sizes.  This variation prompts students to think more flexibly about perimeter, and to understand that it can be the boundary of any shape and that its measurements are not limited to whole numbers.  Students will also tackle problems in which some measurements around the perimeter of a polygon are missing but can be determined by reasoning.  Students consider the efficiency of their strategies and identify tools for solving; for example, they use multiplication as a tool when measurements are repeated. 

Science

Students are wrapping up the Sun, Moon, and Stars unit. They participated in hands on science investigations and recorded notes and observation in their science notebooks. In addition to content knowledge, this unit has included art and creative writing.

Our final science unit will explore the structures of life.