Wednesday, November 17

 Hi parents,

We had an awesome day today!

In the morning, the students had an extra long work period / explore and play block because of all the responsible choices they were making. Our classroom could've been in a Montessori ad. Students were working on floor puzzle of Canada, writing stories, writing detailed ideas for video games, creating artwork, doing bonus math problems, and more.

We revisited our challenging writing prompt from yesterday and had a lot more success. We spent more time discussing 'similes', and brainstormed examples of adjectives and nouns that could be used to create a simile. We talked about how some adjectives and nouns work well together (example: "It was as graceful as a ballerina), but that other combinations don't really make any sense. For example, if someone wrote, "The dog was as hungry as a school", that wouldn't really help anyone understand how hungry the dog really was. Even though the adjective and noun were used correctly, the sentence still doesn't make sense. 

In order to reinforce the importance of similes that make sense, students wrote 3 examples of good similes, and 3 non-examples. The non-examples were fun to write and quite entertaining to read. Students went back and revised their work from yesterday, and they're looking a lot better now.

BLOG HOMEWORK:

Today, we listened to the song "Cold as Ice" by Foreigner and talked about similes. Can you find and listen to another 'simile song' at home? Students will receive 2 bonus Class Dojo points if they can tell me another example of a simile song tomorrow in class.

We talked about the Noodles and Bowls strategy for solving multiplication problems. Students worked through a few problems to show that they understood it. Even though 'Noodles and Bowls' is a somewhat inefficient strategy,  I think it is a great starting point for multiplication as it creates a clear visual of the process. 

Tomorrow is PATTERN DAY at Lake Bonavista School!

Wear something with patterns! The more patterns the better.

Have a nice night,

Zac

PS: We still need about 11 containers before we start our drum project. If you finish any yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, etc, please clean out the container and send it in. :)