Spelling, due tomorrow:
Write the word sort in your Blue Notebook using your Word Study workbook and the sort begun in class today.
Reading Log & Word Hunt:
Read 30 minutes a day
Hand in log and word hunt on Friday
Fourth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Purple group:
Practice multiplication facts 10 minutes
Option 1 (plum): Unit 3, page 63-64
Option 2 (periwinkle): Handout
Blue Group Homework: Multiplication/Division word problems, pages 51-52.
Fifth grade math homework, due tomorrow
Tonight their homework is to read over their math notebooks and look back at their packets from the last few weeks to review the unit and study for tomorrow's short assessment.
Story endings
Students continued work on their stories by coming up with alternate endings to the original ending they came up with last week. Then they shared the original and new endings with their writing partners. To consider the importance of story conclusions, we looked at a Lewis Carrol poem with a "made-up" ending that did not fit the story in the poem. We discussed this ending, and why it did not seem to fit the mood and direction of the poem by having a sensational conclusion coming our of "nowhere." We contrasted it with the actual final stanza, that the students agreed, fit the poem much better by not magically solving the conflict or tone of the original poem.
Word Study
During word study today, students continued word sorts using their Words their Way workbooks in their small groups. Cafe Word was serving: Crossword Crunch and Thesaurus Soup (two side activities aimed at developing spelling and vocabulary knowledge).
Fifth grade math
Fifth graders played a lively game of Smart Board Jeopardy this morning to review the fractions, decimals, and percents unit.
Fourth grade math
Purple group: We started the week with our five-minute multiplication fact warm-up, but this time we tried an energizer beforehand, getting our heart rates up before answering the questions. Today's question: How can we break up or double & halve factors to multiply them? On the Smart Board, students shared strategies for solving double-digit multiplication, like breaking numbers into multiples of tens and units and drawing arrays, or doubling one factor and halving the other. Tomorrow students will take an end of unit assessment, and Wednesday we will review the standard algorithm for multiplication. This week fourth grade math will be shorter, since Cerrito is off to Fort Ross Thursday and Friday.
Blue Group: We began the day with warm-up problems in multiplication and subtraction. We practiced finding solutions to division word problems in small groups with an emphasis on understanding how to interpret the importance of remainders.
Students share alternative endings to their stories with their partners.
