Finishing Up October 16, 2015

Reading & Writing & Blogging:

Reading and writing workshop have been blended together as we look more closely at nonfiction. We've been studying the features of nonfiction in reading so that when we write our own nonfiction books, we have a good idea of what really needs to go in them. After examining several nonfiction texts in class, we made a list of features of nonfiction. Our list includes: table of contents, headings, photographs/illustrations, captions, index, and bold print. These six features will need to be included in our own nonfiction writing. We also found more, like diagrams, maps, timelines, italics, and glossary. Our next step was to define each of these terms and match them to a visual example. These are now tucked neatly away in our reading notebooks, where we can refer to them as needed. 

In order to write our own nonfiction books, we are learning how to conduct research online and with other sources of media. We are learning that .org and .gov tend to be more trustworthy sites for factual and accurate information than some .com. So when we research a topic online, we need a balance of website sources. We are practicing finding great rich articles on a topic of our choice for nonfiction writing. We have been reading these online sources and then reporting some of what we find in our blogs. Check them out! We continue to research next week and hopefully start outlining our nonfiction books! Our goal is complete at least one nonfiction book by the second week of November and then have a our second sharing and celebration of writing!

Math:

We have been practicing basic multiplication facts and problem solving through our math stations. With problem solving, we use the acronym CUBES to help us work through word problems. CUBES means:

C - circle the key numbers. Not all numbers in a word problem are always used!

U - underline the question

B - box the action words. (example: in all usually means add. Each usually means multiply)

E - evaluate the problem and decide what to do

S - solve the problem and double check your work

We also spent time developing the conceptual idea behind multiplying with larger digits. We have used arrays and the area model to demonstrate this. The area model is also known as the distributive property, box model, and partial products model. We will move to the standard algorithm next week.