Week 20 - Painting our Sets + Pen Pal Letters
/After many days of missing our absent classmates, the Sea Lions were excited to finally all be back together in the classroom again by the end of the week. Our time was mainly spent working on preparations for our class play. We took turns typing up the script on the computer (practicing our keyboard skills), while other students finished editing their folktale stories. We learned which roles we will each act out in the play and took time to highlight our lines in the script. We worked as a team to finish painting the forest background scenery and also sketched the scenery for inside the Three Bears’ house. On Friday, we had a little time to begin creating some of the props and costume pieces we will need for the play. This next week, we’ll begin rehearsing our lines and acting out the play, and we will also paint the house background scenery.
The Sea Lions have started a Pen Pal Project! We have been partnered up with a small class of 5th and 6th graders from Springfield, Missouri. We had fun locating where their town is on the map, learning a little about how to write a letter, and brainstorming ideas of what we could write to someone to introduce ourselves. Each Sea Lion wrote letters to their two pen pals on Friday, and we’re excited to finish the envelopes and mail them off this week.
We continued our studies of fractions this week. We looked at geometric art and practiced splitting the shapes into equal units so that we could write fractions of how much of the art was represented by each different color. Then we practiced comparing fractions to determine which one is greater, using different methods to make equivalent fractions with numbers that would be easier to compare. The Sea Lions also enjoyed creating rulers with our own units of measurement. We gave our measuring units imaginative names (such as “boogles,” “dollas,” “roruros,” and “boonswaggles”) and filled in the rulers with all the fractions for each mark. This helped us learn about improper fractions (such as 5/3) and mixed numbers (such as 1 ⅔), as well as the infinite number of fractions that are possible. On Friday, we played a math game using shape blocks to help us recognize and write mixed number fractions.
We chose new novels for our next round of book clubs. This time we will be splitting into two small groups to read and discuss separate novels. The majority of the Sea Lions have been continuing to read the Harry Potter novels for their free-choice treasured reading time, and the students enjoy sharing their love of those stories and characters with each other. Our class took a trip to visit the public library and enjoyed a bit of extra space without the Otters there.
The Sea Lions and Otters have been gathering together each day to hold group discussions about social-emotional topics and challenges/behaviors we’re noticing in our interactions together. We’ve been brainstorming ways to be good leaders and role models for one another, ways to cooperate and play together better, and ways to be more inclusive and kind in our words and actions. During Outside Choice time, students have been working together to build obstacle courses and they’ve enjoyed racing around them and improving their agility. We’ve also been enjoying some new movement games that Ms. Ren has been teaching us.
