Friday Afternoon Post (January 31, 2020)

Howdy Folks!

Let's see what we're working on this week...

Science

This week we discussed the topic of matter and how we measure matter in science by understanding mass, volume, and density.

Math

This week we continued our understanding and practice of division; we used an area model to help  relate multiplication and division. We wrote related fact families and think multiplication to divide.

We then used the area model to record the partitions (decompose, break-apart, etc.) of a two-digit dividend that are easily divisible by the one-digit divisor.

We continued to use an area model to record the partitions of a three-digit dividend that are easily divisible by the one-digit divisor.

Reader's Workshop

We're continuing to hone our skills in determining (inferring)the meaning behind poems, as well as explaining the literary techniques used in poems as a way to support our inferences on the poem!

We're also applying these literary techniques in our poems that we've crafted as well!

Writer's Workshop

We're continuing to sharpen our skills in persuasive writing! along with layering our reasons (that support our thesis) with a variety of examples, evidence, and explanations, we also worked on hooking the reader's attention by crafting excellent lead sentences in our intro paragraph!

Social Studies

We're practicing note-taking skills of non-fiction texts, by focusing in on the keywords in the texts, and summarizing the main points of the text!

And that's a wrap! Cheers, y'all!

Friday Afternoon Post (January 24, 2020)

Howdy Folks!

Let's see what we've been doing this week in E-8....

Reader's Workshop

We been reading A LOT of poetry and forming interpretations of what these poems might mean. Interpretations requires multiple reads of the poem, eliciting the mood, feeling, meaning of the poem, and then analyzing and explaining the literary techniques used within the poem! I've been telling students that I despised poetry when I was young, but nowadays I enjoy reading poetry more because I learned that poetry is open to interpretation, just as long as we can prove our interpretations with clues/evidence/proof from the poem itself! I also realized that poetry is meant to be read out loud and that poetry is meant to have an open discourse between peers! Gotta use our social skills to talk and communicate our thoughts, you know?

By the way, we've also taken these literary techniques and tried our hand at creating our own poems!

Writer's Workshop

We've been working on our persuasive writing skills during Writer's Workshop! This week we focused on fine-tuning our thesis by writing our reasons write into our thesis! We've also been working on using a variety of examples as a way to persuading the readers that our reasons and thesis is valid!

And of course, we're always homing our skills of inferring on fictional texts and stories!

Math 

Fractions! Yep, this week we've been honing our skills on understanding fractions, specifically adding and subtracting fractions, but also knowing when we need to decompose/compose/regroup fractions so that we can perform these operations!

And the class came with their A+ sock game today!

Cheers y'all!