Weekly News (April 24-28)

Hoping all these April showers bring some beautiful May flowers!!

Math
This week we practiced solving comparison number stories using our interactive whiteboard. For example, in the problem below, students had to determine how many more cars Brian had by comparing the two amounts.

We also practiced our counting skills this week. We reviewed counting by 1's, 5's, and 10's, and then we introduced counting by 2's! We talked about when it might be useful to count by 2's and named items we might find in pairs such as socks, mittens, and shoes. Then we practiced counting collections of items by 2's.

Click here to dance and count by 2's!

We also introduced the concept of fractions by dividing objects or a group of objects in half. Students talked with partners about the meaning of the word "half" and came up with these great ideas:

"When you divide things in half you break it into two pieces."

"In the morning I break my muffin in half and share it with my brother or sister."

"When you share something with someone, you should make sure both 
halves are the same."

Then we watched two Brainpop videos to introduce the concept of dividing objects or collections of objects into equal groups. When cutting an item in half, we learned that both parts must be equal or the same size.

Literacy and Science
This week we began our final science unit of the year that will focus on how animals, plants, and people use resources from their environments to survive.

We began our unit by listening to several short texts about different kinds of animals, like the ones pictured below, and then we discussed what information we knew about animals. We recorded our thoughts and came up with the following class definition for an animal:

An animal is a creature that can move and get what it needs from where it lives like water, food, air, and shelter.

We also talked about the different needs of pets, wild animals, and people and learned that people and animals have four basic needs---food, water, shelter, and air. Click on the video below to learn more about these four needs.

The students also had time to select an animal they would like to research throughout our unit. They are super excited to begin their research!