June 7

Today was Wacky Wednesday. We started by reading the story Wacky Wednesday by Dr. Suess.  Today, the students were also in charge of planning the day.  They were thoughtful about the day and they planned fun, but educational activities.  We started our day with math rather than our regular Daily 5.  We played a game of addition/subtraction war and then we finished our math challenge from yesterday.  We gave each letter a value and then we found the value of different words.

For example, the word Bag would be worth $2+ $1 + $7 = $10.  We also challenged ourselves to find the value of our name and lastly, find a word worth $25 and $50.  This was a hard challenge but many students started to find some words by the end of the class.   At home, you could try this together by finding the value of your names, grandparents names, or even street name!  It is fun to see the different strategies that the students use and how much they are able to do mentally!  

After math, we worked on designing our boat.  Students know their boats need to float, be stable, be able to move, hold a load of 10 marbles and survive a collision with an "iceberg".  Students are working in pairs or groups of three to collaboratively plan, prototype, and test the boat.   We got off to a good start!  We are still taking in supplies if you have other things at home you would like to send in!

We also worked in Google Docs on our giant descriptive writing.  We are working on using strong verbs and powerful adjectives to describe our imaginative giants.  Working on Google Docs allows us to practice our typing skills, use assistive technology, and learn how to share document so we can collaboratively edit each other's work. 

This afternoon we went into the project room to make some "Giants".  We traced each other's bodies and then used our rough copy of our giant to create a life sized version.  Tomorrow we will start to paint our giants.  Next week, we will use these to do some non-standard measurement.  

Tomorrow our literacy week continues with Colourful Thursday.  Wear different colours, all one colour or even clashing colours to go with tomorrow's theme.  It is also our Great Book Exchange.  Students are invited to bring in their quarters to buy some gently used books.  This will allow them to stock up on summer reading books!

We went outside this morning to read a fun story called "This is a Moose".  It is a cute story about how people (or moose) can do anything they want if they choose to.  This book even went to space!

Don't you just love Sam's "Wacky" hair?