Week Ending September 20

It's been a busy and fun week of learning in Room 204. Here's what we've been up to this week.

READING: Engaged readers use a variety of techniques to assess their understanding of a text. This week we practiced using comprehension questions to help us focus while reading selected text. That is to say, we read comprehension questions before we read the text. With questions in mind, we were able to focus our attention on looking for answers to the questions.

Common Core State Standard

WRITING: Expository writers support their claims with strong evidence and reasoning. We began using CER (claim, evidence, and reasoning) in our math and science writing. Specifically, we learned to gather evidence and data in response to a focus question. We used our reasoning skills to uncover the big math or science ideas revealed by the evidence. This allowed us to make a claim, which we used to make our topic sentence. 

Common Core State Standards

SCIENCE: We designed experiments to help us investigate what direction water flows on a slope. We observed the cause-and-effect relationship of the size of the water dome to the speed at which it flows on a speed.

Next Generation Science Standards

MATH: Brilliant mathematicians use multiple methods to solve problems. This week, we practiced the standard algorithm for regrouping (borrowing and carrying for you and me) as well as show-all-totals. We rewrote addends in expanded form to help us visualize what is happening when we are forming new groups of tens and hundreds. Finally, we used proof drawings as evidence of our accuracy.  For those of you unfamiliar with proof drawings, I found this teaching video on YouTube. The video is addressed to parents of second graders. Second graders may use proof drawings as a strategy to solve multi-digit addition. In third grade, we use number strategies to solve multi-digit addition, but the proof drawings provide valuable evidence that our answers are correct. Moreover, proof drawings reinforce those ideas of place value and illustrate how place value plays a role in regrouping. 

Common Core State Standards

MISC: Picture day is September 25. Remember to wear big smiles, and your favorite outfits. Curriculum night is also on the 25th. I look forward to seeing you all there.