Monday: We organized our desks and cubbies first thing in the morning. We also put our HOMEWORK FOLDERS in our backpacks. Then we took the Chapter 1 math test. We worked on “Vocab Ventures” during PAWS. This week, we are learning about the words AVID and BELLIGERENT. Our IU M401 students came for their first visit. Ms. Balaskas and Ms. Pavlidis will join our class on Monday and Wednesday afternoons this semester. Next semester, they will be doing full time student teaching. They helped us with our final wellness center. We’ve learned a lot about our individual wellness. Now we’ll focus on community wellness.
Tuesday: Our math tests needed some “fixes,” so we spent some time in the morning working on fixing our mistakes. We talked about the importance of taking your time and doing careful work at all times in 3rdLand. So important! In the afternoon, we learned more about the Hoosier Hills Food Bank. We made sketch notes as we watched a video about the food bank. We received a great email from the food bank. They thanked us for collecting cereal and will pick up the cereal the first week of October.
Wednesday: We took another assessment about character traits this morning. We also are learning about how to write literature circle post-its in preparation for starting our chapter books soon. In the afternoon, we learned more about the benefits of public parks and how parks are funded. We researched parks at the Bloomington Parks and Rec Site and found out that our town has 32 parks! We are making posters to persuade people to head to the park!
Thursday: We are working on subtraction and addition up to 1000, with regrouping. This is tough stuff for many of us, but we’ll get there. We are also working on solving 2 step word problems. During Writing Workshop, we learned about the craft of writing: strong leads, power words, snapshots and endings that leave us thinking. We focused on leads today and looked through books with our partners to find leads that really “hook us in.”
Friday: Picture DAY!!! Everyone looked great and we had our pictures taken before gym, which was fantastic. We worked on our PERSUASIVE PARKS POSTERS in the morning. We talked about the importance of having few to no CUPS errors on posters. We also spent some time on Ms. Stewart’s Site, Literacy Cafe. We worked on responses to the poem, “I Am the Dot.” In the afternoon, we worked with Dr. Frye to continue work on our LIBRARY ORGANIZATION project. We ended our busy week with some calm, quiet reading time.