2H Class Blog!: Jan. 21st News

I hope everyone had another great snow day last week! With a short week on our hands, we had a lot to cram in! Everyone worked hard and made it a fun, productive week!

Guest author Mary Preble read students one of her published books, shared her writing process, and introduced a new art collage technique! We can't wait to try out her technique using a gelli pad, paint, and some old "junk" :)

Highlights from our week:

*Reader's Workshop: To continue reinforcing all the wonderful fluency strategies we've been working on, students created their first "Selfies!" Students chose a few pages from a book they have been practicing to show off their great reading! They had a TON of fun creating these videos and I can't wait for you to see their work! You can check out your child's video in their Seesaw portfolio (if you need account information sent home, please just let me know!).

*Writer's Workshop: These next weeks will be all about science, science, science! This exciting and challenging writing unit focuses on writing like a scientist. Writing like scientists will give us the chance to conduct science experiments nearly every day! We began with a quick exploration of procedural writings (and the importance of being specific!)

Looking to the experts: studying mentor texts!

Then it was time to launch into writing a LAB REPORT! As we've been learning about the states of matter, we were able to continue with our investigations, recording our findings in great detail a long the way! This past week, we started by looking at the questions: "Do liquids flow at the same rate?" Working as a whole class, we underwent "lab report boot camp!" Talk about a mature task (they commented that they felt like they were in high school :) ) Each child had to record the question, make a hypothesis, write a detailed procedure, and record their results. They should be VERY impressed with their work!

After completing their first report, they tackled their second report in partnerships. Changing just one variable from our original experiment, students had to recreate a lab report, setup and conduct an experiment, and share out their results.

*Science: In addition to the science experiments conducted during writer's workshop, this week we also studied the concept of melting. Following another Mystery Science experiment, students had to test to find out which candy they should "send to their friend at Camp Way-Too-Hot". They needed to select a candy that wouldn't melt! Comparing it to chocolate, each group tested either jelly beans, starburst, or gummy bears. After tallying the results, it was clear: we should send GUMMY BEARS to our friend!

*5th Grade Buddies: It was another great week of design engineering with our fifth grade buddies. Partnerships had to choose a different material for this week's challenge: building a house. They had just 10 minutes to build this time, but each group found success! We continue to be impressed by the perseverance and ingenuity of each design team. Keep up the great work!