PA for the Week of 11-29

 3PA will arrive on planet Shine this week in The Green Book. What is this new world like? What resources are available? What will new homes on Shine look like? What is the soil like? Can the colonists successfully farm the land? Is Shine safe? To follow along with what we are working on, check out the hyperdoc in Google Classroom. My plan is to get through the end of chapter 5 this week.

4PA will begin the week learning more about figurative language. The kids will focus on finding examples of  several types of figurative language in The Secret Garden. We will spend the week with metaphors, similes, hyperbole, allusion, personification, and imagery within the walls of the garden and Misslethwaite Manor. By the end of the week, students need to be at the beginning of chapter 11. 

5PA will begin the week going through the organizer for the TED Talk we are working on about a young person who was a catalyst for change in the world. The kids will be completing their research this week, and organizing their notes using the structure provided on the organizer/outline for the final presentations. 

TD for the Week of 11-29

 K Math will be busy during our hour together working through a few complex estimation problems. We will be using arrays of dots to see what multiplication means, and we will be using post-it notes to create layered patterns following different patterns.

K Literacy will be making story maps this week as we focus more on story elements like characters, location, action, problem, and solution...CLAPS. We will be clapping our way through a few picture books based on Crayons this week, beginning with Gurple and Preen by Linda Sue Park. 

1TD will be traveling to the Hundred Acre Wood this week for a special birthday. The kids and I will be reading the A. A. Milne classic story "Eeyore has a Birthday." As we read we will discuss key elements of the plot, what to do with a very useful pot, and how all of the characters have unique personalities that add flavor to the story.

2TD is half way through Frindle! This week, we will see what happens when the media finds out about the new word. We will continue to discuss how the two main characters are evolving and changing as the story unfolds. 

PA for the Week of 11-15

It's almost Thanksgiving!!! That does not seem possible, but it is here already. Today, I am going to start off all the PA groups with a bit of Thanksgiving fun. Kindergarten teachers sometimes ask their students to provide directions on how to roast a turkey, a hilarious exercise for the adults who read them...but what have the 3-5 kids learned from watching you cooking at home? Today, the kids will be writing their detailed instructions on how to roast the bird. I will read them tonight and declare a winner in each group tomorrow. I'm not going to prepare the winning recipes, but whoever comes the closest in each group will get culinary bragging rights. Sometimes, just having an hour to do something fun is just what school needs. Have your son or daughter give you their take on how to cook a turkey tonight!

 3PA will blast off into space this week for a journey to a distant planet called Shine. The kids are I are beginning Jill Patton Walsh's The Green Book. We will be working off of a multi-page document in Google Classroom with daily activities for each chapter and links to explore. 

4PA begins reading The Secret Garden on Tuesday. There are a variety of activities in Google Classroom that we will be working on as we begin the journey to the moors that surround the manor that Mary Lennox will soon call home.

5PA  will spend our week doing research on a young person who has made a positive impact in their community. The kids have an outline and a guide for how to develop a TED style talk using the information we gather this week. After Thanksgiving, we will use the research to develop a TED Talk about this person who was a catalyst for change. 

Talent Development for the Week of 11-15

 K Lit students will be spending time with the David Wiesner picture book Sector 7 during our time together this week. The story is about a field trip to The Empire State Building and ends up in the sky factory called Sector 7 where all the clouds get their weather assignments for the day. This wordless adventure will spark conversations about story elements and development of the plot in a story.

K Math will work on two different video math problems that focus on estimation. We will be thinking about graham crackers and those tasty perforated lines, but we will use them to explore multiplication as repeated addition, and we will estimate using Whoppers. 

First grade will be working on summarizing this week. I have sets of a variety of picture books that we will be reading in pairs and discussing as a group. The class will develop a summary together, but that's not the final goal. Summarizing is hard, but condensing an entire book into a short summary of only 7 words creates a challenge that will be our focus for the week. We began today with Scaredy Squirrel. 

Second grade will continue to dive into the story of Nick and Mrs. Granger in the novel Frindle. The kids and I will be focusing on how the characters evolve as the story plays out. Today, we began writing down our observations of the characters from the first five chapters we have explored. 

Thank You

 

5PA A 12-year-old app developer | Thomas Suarez

5PA Richard Turere: My invention that made peace with lions

PA for the Week of 11-8

 3PA finished reading our novel last week! I am so excited to have a whole group discussion today about what the kids think about the completion of this tale. The kids will be working most of the week on finishing up their journals based on the book, they are really into this assignment, most are at the six page mark in their journals already. By Friday, we will be ready to begin a new novel, one with many connective thematic threads to this last book. On Friday, we will begin a science fiction story about a group of families who need to leave Earth and colonize a new planet. We will be reading The Green Book by Jill Patton Walsh.

4PA will begin presenting their work on The Harlem Renaissance this week. I am excited to see how the class will do with this visual storytelling project. When I told the class that the words were only going to be in their speeches and not on their slides, there were many confused looks in the crowd. Looking at a presentation from the viewer and listener perspective is new for the kids, and I am anticipating a fun few days of sharing. Next, we will be moving into one of my favorite parts of the 4PA curriculum. The kids and I will begin reading the 1911 classic, The Secret Garden.

5PA will be presenting their digital quiz shows, based on the stories by Ray Bradbury we have been reading, on Monday and Tuesday. Then, we will be moving into a new unit on young people making a positive difference in the world. There are three new links under the "student resources" section of the website that we will be using as a jumping off point for this unit. The kids are going to explore the people on the lists I have linked, and then pick one person to learn more about. One of the people on the list participated in a Zoom call last year with the students! The end goal is going to be a mini-TED Talk about the person who inspired your son or daughter the most with their positive impact. 

Talent Development for the Week of 11-8-21

 Welcome to Talent Development

My kindergarten group swapped students two weeks ago, and this week, I will have all new first and second grade students for the next six weeks. TD is a 30 minute pull-out literacy enrichment program for our youngest students who show an aptitude for reading. We will meet every school day to work on reading skills that will provide some challenge. The work we do will typically be one school year above the grade your child is currently in and I do not assign homework. Here is what we will be working on this week.

Kindergarten Math will spend time learning about breaking down larger numbers, or showing the number in new ways. How many ways are there to show the number 12? We can use addition, subtraction, basic multiplication, pictures, tallies, words, there are a lot of ways to show numbers. The kids will be in groups using blank hexagons and dry erase markers to make chains of ways to "decompose" a number.

Kindergarten Literacy will read a memoir this week. The memoir of a goldfish. What would be in the life story of a goldfish? What if other animals or objects could write their own life story or memoir? That's the kind of fun we will be having together this week!

First Grade TD will begin our week reading a picture book about inventing something new. All inventions stem from the same initial spark, you need to create a solution to a problem. Maxine's problem is that she needs to figure out a way to march with her pet fish in her class pet parade. How does one march with a fish? What problems will the kids in first grade attempt to solve with their own invention? I hope that inspiration will come from a few articles about other inventions that we will be reading together. We will read about how the Slip-N-Slide was created, how the Wright Brothers worked on flying, and we will read about a camp for kids who want to learn how to be an inventor.

Second Grade TD will begin a novel study this week using Frindle by Andrew Clements. This is a fun story about a boy named Nick, his teacher Mrs. Granger, and the epic journey of how words are invented. The first group of students read this book and they loved it! We will focus our time on how the two main characters evolve and change as the story unfolds. 

Happy Diwali