News and Notes from Room 204 First Week in October

Invasive crayfish are dying in the Midwest. Could a fungus be the cause?

Monday, October 3:  We worked hard on our subtraction work today.  3 digit subtraction with regrouping has been tough stuff for many of us, but we continue to practice.  We’ll get there.  Seven crayfish came to Room 204 today. With our small groups, we observed their behaviors and structures.  We also watched 2 short videos about crayfish.  We read the crayfish section in the Structures of Life textbook.

Tuesday, October 4:  More working on subtraction with regrouping.  We also practiced checking our answers by using the inverse operation: addition. We read about the Webb telescope in Time for Kids today.  The photos from the Webb are incredible.  In the afternoon, we brought our cereal out to the HHFB van.  The HHFB folk thanked us for helping provide food to our fellow Bloomington citizens.  After some work with the crayfish, we released them back to the creek.  Many of us have wondered how they’re doing now??? Lots of crayfish missing happening in Room 204.

Wednesday, October 5:  We played a math game called Anything But 5 with partners this morning.  We used base 10 blocks as we raced from 95 to 0, using subtraction.  After Spanish, we previewed our Peace Keepers unit.  After recess, we worked on a crawdad mini-report.  Our university teachers read a section from TFK where kids gave their opinions about whether the US should send astronauts into space.  We wrote down the reasons for and against mentioned in the article.  Then we voted with our bodies, moving to sections of the room to show our opinion.  A few students were against space travel.  The rest of us were split between YES and Not Sure.

Thursday, October 6;  We began our day with Reading Workshop.  We heard some book blurbs about our chapter book choices for Literature Circles, which will be starting soon.  We also reviewed the criteria for getting a + in our writer’s notebooks.  During Math we used cash register tape to model the factors for 3, 6 and 9 up to 90.  After we worked on some pages in our math books, we played Anything But 5.  Weather was beautiful for our extra recess.  We ended the day with some quiet handwriting practice and listening to our read aloud, Prairie Lotus. A very pleasant Thursday.

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