Thursday, October 25, 2012

Our Class is Turning Orange!

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Writer’s Workshop:
In Writer’s Workshop the girls continued working on their stories. They are now comfortable writing independently for up to 20 minutes! During Writer’s Workshop Ms. Hamre and I rotate through out the room conferencing with each of the girls to support their writing needs and the creative process.

Mathematics:
The girls have begun exploring the concept of compare problems. They have been playing the game Which Bug Will Win and comparing the two groups to see how much each bug won by. The girls are also comparing groups of bugs and finding out ways to find out which group is larger/smaller and by how many. These strategies will help prepare them to solve compare word problems like “Ms. Hamre had 10 carrots and Mrs. Dutton had 14. How many more carrots did Ms. Dutton have?”
The girls also worked in groups of 4-6 to solve a simple join-addition problem. Each girl shared her strategy with their group and learned different strategies from one another.

Integrated learning:
This week was all about answering our pumpkin wonders. On Monday we read the book How Many Seeds in a Pumpkin. While reading the story we learned that the number of ridges (lines) on a pumpkin correlates with the amount of seeds the pumpkin contains. We also learned that older pumpkins are darker in color (and also have more seeds) than younger pumpkins. To ‘test’ this information we opened up three pumpkins and made predictions on which pumpkins would have the most/least seeds and the largest/smallest seeds. 
Please click on this link to see photos of our pumpkin exploration. 
On Tuesday we had a messy day and emptied our pumpkins, on Wednesday we counted our seeds and on Friday we get to eat them!
 

IMG 6006 from Lisa Dutton on Vimeo.

Today we asked they girls how they would measure their pumpkin using the materials in the classroom. After listening to (and getting very confused by) their ideas we asked them to write their ideas down. Here are some of their ideas.
A.Y idea

A.L idea

N.S idea


A.M idea

G.A idea

L.N ideas

A.C idea
“Put a big and a small pumpkin on paper and see which has more crackles.” –D.B.
“Put the pumpkin on a piece of paper. Put the books on each side, then put the numbers in the middle of the pumpkin and the books. The numbers will tell you how big it is.” –Aa.S
“Put the pumpkin on a wire and if the wire breaks than it is heavy.” –E.L
“I am going to measure the pumpkin compared to me.” –G.A
“Put the pumpkin on paper, if it rips then it means it is heavy.” –G.H.
“If you put pencils on a paper and put the pumpkin on a paper, see if the pencils fall over. If they do, then the pumpkin is heavy.” –L.H.
“If you put the  pumpkin on a block and if the block does not break then the pumpkin is light.” –M.B
“I am going to put it on a scale. That will tell me how heavy it is.” –S.W.B
“I am going to put it in the water and see if it sinks. If it sinks it is heavy, if it doesn’t sink it is light.” –M.S.
“You take something kind of heavy. Then you push it against the pumpkin, kind of light, kind of heavy. If it falls over it is not that heavy. If it doesn’t fall over it is really heavy.” -E.H.
“I am going to put the pumpkin on a disc (CD) then put it on the paper to see if it makes a mark on the paper, or the cd scratchy. If it does the pumpkin is heavy.” –A.W
and the ever popular idea “Put the pumpkin on a pencil and if the pencil breaks off then the pumpkin is heavy.” –Au.S –L.N  -S.O –W.F 
Next week we will attempt to test these ideas and find out if any of them work :)

We also had a lot of fun with our orange play dough!





























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