April 21 - 25th

In Math this week we worked on measuring in meters.  The children needed to chose large objects and distances to first estimate, then measure.

Mr. G let us borrow his trundle wheel as another tool to measure meters!

As part of our Life Cycles studies, the children have each chosen an animal to study.  They have been creating graphic organizers to illustrate their animal's life cycle.  In Library, Mrs. Trudell helped the students create the following life cycle illustration of a shark pup, as practice:

This week we celebrated Earth Day by doing our part to pitch in a bit.  We put on some rubber gloves and picked up litter on the Angell School playground and outdoor learning center!

We also read some stories about how to take care and respect our Earth:

This week we received baby caterpillars!  We will observe the caterpillars as they grow and take care of them until they become butterflies.

Enjoying a beautiful spring day!

April 14 - 17th

We were very happy to welcome back Conrad this week!  He shared some highlights from his stay in Italy with us.

Savannah also shared some highlights from her family trip to Australia!

In Math this week we continued our work on fractions:

A few children shared their mysteries that they wrote in Reading Groups:

This week in Social Studies we started a unit on being a good shopper.  We began by discussing the differences between needs and wants. The children brainstormed a chart  of what they consider needs and wants when making buying choices.  We discovered that some items were debatable, such as books and computers.  Here are the lists the students came up with:

NEEDS: food, clothes, shoes, shelter, water, school supplies, electricity

WANTS: sweets/treats, pets, toys, books, computers, art supplies, jewelry, TV/cable

Class Read-Aloud

Liam had the class play a fun game of Jeopardy to celebrate his birthday!

On Friday we had the opportunity to see the Toledo Opera Company perform 

"The Mikado" by Sir Arthur Sullivan:

March 31st - April 4th

FUN WITH FRACTIONS

All week we worked on fractions, with various manipulatives.  In this first lesson, we were using actual pattern blocks to find fractions of a whole. The children then used the pattern block templates to illustrate how they divided up their shapes:

Here the children were working with equivalent fractions:

They labeled and cut out the following fractions:

Then they decided how many fourths, sixths, or eights it would take to fill up a specific fraction of each circle.  

First two examples below:  2/4 = 1/2  and 2/8 = 1/4

Equivalent fractions (matching) game:

Author's Chair:

On Friday we had some fun with writing.  The students partnered up and created joint stories, where they could not plan/discuss in advance, but alternated writing sentences.  The goal was to create a story that had a beginning, middle and end, including a problem/conflict and solution.  The children came up with some very creative and silly stories!

Sharing their stories with the class: