This week we wrapped up one round of centers and began several new ones. In reading we introduced a center where students write and draw their schema about a topic in a book. We have defined "schema" to mean what you already know about something. When readers activate the relevant schema it can help them make more accurate predictions about many parts of a story, including the vocabulary, plot, and characters. Similarly, we have been practicing making connections between events in a story and events in our own lives. In these videos students share some of their self-t0-text connections:
In the last round of centers students made number sentence puzzles with two addends and this week they are reviewing those number pairs that add up to ten with several Smartboard activities. This is a video of a student making 3 + 7 = 10 with bears and then checking on his fingers. This week we opened a center in which students make as many different addition number sentences (equations) as possible that equal ten, and illustrate each with different colored markers on a tens grid. For example to show that 2 + 3 + 5 = 10 students would color in 2 blocks with a color, then 3 blocks with another color, and 5 blocks with a third color. We are also recreating pattern block designs that students made last week, working with base ten blocks to show two digit numbers in groups of tens and ones (in a game called Race to 100), and playing the two new spatial reasoning and problem solving games that we learned in the Strategies Lab: Cover Your Tracks and Rush Hour Jr. (pictured in the Voicethread below).
We started a typing game in the computer lab and have also been learning more about how to make comments in Voicethread. You can see some of our experiments with making comments using the keyboard, microphone, webcam and paintbrush. Thanks to those of you readers who were brave enough to leave a comment of your own, too! Seeing that we have an audience outside the classroom was very exciting.
Finally, in art on Friday students made these colorful masks and I had just enough time to record their ferocious sound effects before dismissal:
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