Balance and Motion

The students were excited to be beginning a new science unit - balance and motion! During this unit of study, students will explore stable (balanced) and unstable systems, using counterweights to change the center of mass of the systems. This week our focus is balance. Students are experimenting with various objects and discovering how they can be balanced. Yesterday we introduced the idea of counterweights being used to balance objects.

Later on they will also explore two types of motion--spinning and rolling--first through trial and error, and later through more systematic explorations.

Through the experience-based investigations, students begin to develop a sense of variables, which they control to produce desired outcomes.

Word Work

This week's spelling pattern is -ing. Our accountable words are : you   your

Today partners worked to create sentences using words with this pattern.

Math Vocabulary

We started our data unit today. This week we are introducing some new vocabulary terms.

Data, survey, tally marks, tally chart, graph, bar graph, picture graph

During this unit, students explore concepts of data analysis involving up to three categories of data.  Students collect, organize, represent, and interpret data.  Many of the problems about data are structured to represent a variety of addition and subtraction situations like those they worked with in Unit 1.  A Big Idea that connects most of the work in this cluster is that data can be presented in graphs and charts, and a variety of questions can be answered by collecting and analyzing data.

Essential Questions

Writing: How can I share my opinions? Why do people share their opinions?

Math: What is data? How do we use data?

Reading: What makes a story? How do readers use story elements to stay engaged with the text?
How do changes in story elements influence the story?

Science: Why do things move? What are different ways to change the motion of an object?
What is balance?

Homework/Word Work

Since it is such a short week, there is no homework packet. Also there are not new chunks this week for our spelling work. We will be reviewing ones we have already done and doing some work with consonant blends.

Math

We are nearing the end of our first math unit. This week we have focused on fact families so students understand how addition and subtraction are related. It took several days of practice for some to realize exactly how these number relationships work. For instance with the numbers: 8  4  12  these four number sentences can be constructed: 4+8=12  8+4=12  12-8=4  12-4=8

We have also done some work with equality and moving the equal sign. This was sort of tricky for some of us! Students learn that 8=4+4  says the same thing as 4+4=8. Students should understand that no matter where the equal sign is, they can still find the solution.

Students worked on finding whether an equation was true or false. For instance: 4+3=6+1  would be a true statement. We learned that the equal sign can sometimes be in the middle and we can add or subtract each side to see if they are equal. If not, the statement is false. This is definitely a new concept that we will revisit later this school year.

More practice with story problems and showing their thinking and explaining their strategy was also done.

Our next unit which will  begin after Thanksgiving break is our Data unit. The essential questions are: What is data? How do we use data? These are the skills the students will be learning:

- organize and interpret data with up to three categories
- represent data with up to three categories
- ask and answer questions about the total number of data points.
- ask and answer questions about how many in a category.
- ask and answer questions about how many more or less are in one category than in another.

Reading

We are finishing up our talk unit which has put an emphasis on partner reading and comprehension skills. I have been impressed with the students' ability to talk about a text. Students have had the opportunity to work with various partners and put their conversational skills to use! Students have learned that talking about a text is much more than one partner saying something and another partner listening. Students understand the back and forth flow which can include asking questions, clarifying understandings or misunderstandings, sharing ideas and reactions to a text. Here are some prompts you can use at home to talk about books with your child:

-When you were reading what were you thinking?
-I think __________. What do you think?
-Why do you think character ____ acted that way?
-How do you think the character feels and why?
-Why do you think the character keeps doing that?
-What do you think the character wants or needs?
-What is the problem in the story?
-How do you think the character will solve the problem?

-Share with your partner when a character reminds you of someone in real life
-Share with a partner when the story reminds you of something from your life.
-Share with your partner when a character reminds you of another character of another book.
-Share with your partner when something in the book is funny, surprising, or confusing.
-Share with your partner what is resolved or unresolved at the end of the story.