Day two started off with our warm-up problems. Everyone came in and began working right away. The focus of this morning's Grammar Minute lesson was on the simple subject and simple predicate of a sentence. In math we reviewed subtraction, and in our language arts review, students came up with antonyms and completed a couple of sentence editing problems.
This all happened during the first 15 minutes of school. By 8:30 we began a classroom meeting to discuss important emergency evacuation procedures. We reviewed what happens during a fire drill, disaster drill, and lockdown drill. The class had many interesting, hypothetical questions for each of the drills, and by the time we finished this conversation, we were ready to demonstrate our ability to successfully evacuate in the event of an emergency.
We turned our attention to a fun, beginning of the year activity: bio poems. I introduced the activity by sharing a poem about Rosa Parks. It details her interests, fears, hopes, and accomplishments, among other things. Students began writing a rough draft of their own bio poem, and as about a half dozen students finished, I distributed self-portrait templates, which as you can see below, complete the activity. I hope to have these ready for you to enjoy by Back-to-School-Night on Thursday.
At 10:00 I signaled a transition to the class to prepare for our math lesson by putting away the bio poem work and taking out last night's math homework. We reviewed the problem-solving activity and I had the class take out their math notebooks to take down information about the difference between the value and place value of a number. We used a chart like this on the worksheet.
And so, in a number such as the one from the problem last night: 2,796,084,800, the value of the 2 in that number is 2,000,000, while its place value is the one billions place.
After completing our homework review and taking notes on the first lesson from chapter 1, it was 10:30 and time for recess.
When we returned to the class, we launched our first selection from Theme 1: Finding A Way. I posed the Question of the Day: Think of a character from a book or movie that came up with a clever solution to a problem. The students used their composition books to write a paragraph about how this character solved their problem. We discussed a few examples from around the class. A couple of students felt stumped at first, and a few others asked if they could write about a video game, TV show or personal experience. I felt like that would be fine.
After a brief discussion, I read a short personal narrative about a boy who found a way to overcome a challenge at camp one summer by participating in a relay race that he didn't think he could win. He wound up taking second place and earning the respect of his coach and peers. The students' discussion following this story helped them to feel the essence of the theme.
We then discussed this week's reading comprehension focus strategy: use story structure. I displayed a story map on the overhead projector and we reviewed the elements a good story includes: characters, setting, conflict, plot events, and resolution. We discussed each element before the class split up in pairs with their neighbor to read our first selection, Rope Burn.
Once the class finished reading the story, they took out their Practice Books and completed a story map of Rope Burn and highlighted the important information from the story into each story element. We shared out, checked for understanding, and then completed one final activity from the focus wall on Rope Burn before heading to lunch.
The final activity was a review of last night's homework on complete sentences (declarative and interrogative). I collected the homework and everyone lined up to go to lunch.
Following lunch, I distributed chapter 5 science packets to the class. We will begin the year in Earth Science and the first chapter is on oceans. The cover page of the packet is a chapter preview which involves looking through the five lessons in chapter 5 and writing down the lesson titles and subheadings and choosing a favorite picture. We had enough time for everyone to complete Lesson 1. The remainder of this activity was to be completed for homework tonight.
We were going to watch a brief clip called "Rivers and Deltas" from our science DVD but the playback was malfunctioning on the DVD player, so I'll have to see about finding another copy before we go to the Science Lab on Friday.
Before we left to the multipurpose room, everyone took out their binder reminders to write down tonight's homework assignments: story map (conflict and resolution, pg 3); place value (PW1); and the science packet activity we began right after lunch.
We finished the day in the multipurpose room with the band, strings, and choir teachers: Mrs. Zamora, Mrs. Dahms, and Mrs. Steidell. They introduced this year's 5th grade music program and all the kids were given handouts to take home in case they were interested in participating. Music classes begin next week with choir on Tuesday and band/strings on Thursday.
Remember that tomorrow we will be dismissed at 12:00pm and we will be finishing up our bio poems. I'm looking forward to another great day of school!
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