Pie and candy are certainly not what you would expect me to start out with, I'm sure, but what a way to learn. This week in English Language Arts we were focusing on the author's purpose as a comprehension skill. As a class we discussed that typically an author is trying to Persuade you, Inform you, or Entertain you. So we thought about this as an acronym PIE. We spent some time figuring out what different authors were trying to tell us. With each thing we read this week, the students had to ask themselves these and similar questions. If they are trying to persuade you, did they try to convince you of something? If the author was informing you, did they give you some facts or teach you about something? If the author was entertaining you, did they make you laugh or tell you a story? Earlier this week we played a fun printable game I found where they could slide to different slices of PIE. They had a great time playing the game and by the end of today, the class couldn't keep it in themselves about ANYTHING they read when concerning the author's purpose.
This week we also had a very fun learning activity with candy! We started our unit in math on Geometric Solid Shapes. So far, we have spent some time looking at different every day objects and identifying their solid shapes, along with building our own cubes, rectangular prisms, and cylinders. On Wednesday of this week, the students were each given different candies and they had to identify the solid shape, the number of faces, number of edges, and number of vertices. If they were able to correctly chart all information for each candy, then they were able to eat their candies.
Our selection of candies: smarties (cylinders), sugar cube (cube), starburst (rectangular prism), Hershey's kiss (cone), and Toblerone (pyramid). As a class we had also done the package of Toblerone, which was discovered to be a Triangluar Prism.
Working hard to eat the candy!
Our first student to finish and enjoying his reward!
This week we also finished our science that was started a couple of weeks ago. We began in expert groups and each group had a specific pollinator to share information with the class about. Our pollinators were: bats, hummingbirds, bees and wasps, ladybugs and beetles, and flies. The original plan was to finish the research and present last week, but that also happened to be the day we lost power for 2 hours during a thunderstorm; research (at least the digital piece) was unable to be completed that day. So, we picked up this week right where we had left off. Each group completed their research and then presented as experts on their pollinators. Some students were very surprised to hear that bees were not the only pollinators on the planet! As part of these presentations we watched this absolutely beautiful video. Check it out!
As always it has been a fun and busy week.
Thank you to all the families who donated for our field trip to the ocean! Our ocean trip is approaching very quickly. Just as a reminder, the trip is Tuesday, May 31st. We will be leaving promptly at 8:00 am that morning and arriving back to the school at 7:00 pm. Details about what to bring and wear will be going home soon.
