Safety Week

With school-wide presentations and classroom activities about drop off and pick up safety, bike safety, car and seatbelt safety, pedestrian safety, and stranger danger safety, students were immersed in real-world problems while promoting safety and learning how to prevent unintentional injury.  To earn various safety prizes provided by the school, students had to describe barriers and situations that are safe, risky, or harmful to self and others.  

Here is a summary of what happened in our classroom:

​In Langauge Arts... 

• This past week's essential question was What do good citizens do? Students read A Difficult Decision, a text from Wonders.  This story was about two boys who found a GameMaster left at a park.  Wyatt initially wanted to keep the GameMaster, while Paul tried to convince Wyatt it's not the right thing to do. Using this story, students learned how to identify different characters' point of view.  The focus standard addressed this week was 2.RL.6 Acknowledge differences in the points of view of characters, including by speaking in a different voice for each character when reading dialogue aloud.
• Using this story, students practiced the comprehension skill: asking and answering questions.  Students learned about the different levels of questioning, which helps us to ask deeper-level questions and think more critically about the text.  Students also followed our Close-Reading-of-Complex-Text poster to help guide our close read.  

• In addition, we continue to practice with author's message and retelling a story using great children's literature.  This week we read The Dot by Peter H. Reynolds and students practiced addressing the following standard: 2.RL.2 Recount stories, including fables and folktales from diverse cultures, and determine their central message, lesson, or moral. 

• In writing, students are using an O.R.E.O. (opinion, reasons, examples, opinion) format to help them organize their opinion writing.  Using the O.R.E.O. organizer, students can more easily elaborate on their ideas all while keeping them well organized.  

In Math... 

• In Stepping Stones, students first reviewed skip counting by 2s and 5s.  This practice prepared them for repeated addition or multiplication concepts.
• Then students learned to describe equal groups using addition sentences.  Students learned that all multiplication is, is adding equal groups.  Students drew matching pictures to represent different multiplication problems.  

In Science... 

• Mrs. Tanigawa, our STEM resource teacher came to assist us in our hands-on Changing Earth's Surface project.  Students got to investigate land erosion using land models.  First, students predicted which force would make the most impact.  The land models were made of compacted sand on a plastic slope.  Students then applied a "natural force" (water, wind, earthquake and ice) to determine which of the four had the most impact on the sand.  The results were very obvious.  Water made the most erosion!  

                                   Ice                                                                  Wind

                           Earthquake                                                        Water

REMINDERS AND ANNOUCEMENTS​

• The can food drive has been extended to Wednesday.  If you have any extra can goods, please help us with our drive.  Can goods can either be brought to the classroom or delivered to the cafeteria stage.