SLIME DAY!

After our first (not very successful) attempt at slime, we figured 

we should try again to see if we could get it right.

Thankfully this recipe was a success for everyone!

It took some serious patience and a lot of muscle to stir.

Literacy Centers

This week in Literacy we were lucky enough to have some grade

8 visitors to help out.

They were a HUGE help!!!

Center #1: How to Make Slime

We made it last week, so.....let's write about it.  

Don't forget to use transition words like first, next, then, finally.

Center #2: Word Work

Paint your words on the desk

There is always an optional activity for those who finish quickly...

Center #3: Verb Race

After learning about verbs in the past tense, this game focuses on using

regular and irregular verbs properly in the past tense.

Center #4: Research Station

We have learned all about the text features of Non-fiction

books and how they can help us find information.  Students

did some research on an animal of their choice. 

'I'm going to look in the Table of Contents so I know where to look for what

coyotes eat.'

VERBS VERBS VERBS

VERBS VERBS VERBS

It can be very tricky learning how to use verbs in the present and past tense.  

To help us, we listed all sorts of verbs that we can do today.

Today I hug.

Today I love.

Today I cook.

Then we figured out how to use those same verbs in a sentence starting

with yesterday.

Yesterday I hugged.

Yesterday I loved.

Yesterday I cooked.

Easy enough...just add ed!

In Walks meet, steal, ring, run, and know.

These are the rule breakers!  They do NOT follow the rules, so they

belong in JAIL!

Our police officers guided our irregular verbs to jail....

...where they became met, stole, ran, and knew.

Then the students hunted in books for verbs in the past tense. 

They recorded the verbs on post it notes so we could all check them out.

Possible, Impossible, Likely, Unlikely...

Probability

As an introduction to our unit on probability, students talked about events that could/could not happen.  They described the probability as a measure of the likelihood that an event will occur using math language (impossible, possible, likely, unlikely, certain, uncertain, more likely, less likely, equally likely, etc.).  They each chose an event to illustrate, write about and describe the likelihood of that event actually happening.

'I will read a non-fiction book....likely.'

'It will rain minions...impossible.'

'It will rain puppies and kittens.....impossible.'

'I will have a billion horses....unlikely but possible.'

Tower of Ten Game

Students began looking at spinners deciding if they were fair or unfair.

Each time the spinner landed on their side of the spinner, they added a block to their tower...

first one to have a stack of 5 or 10 wins!

'This is a fair spinner because there are two parts white and two parts blue...I can win but you could win too...'

Nobody wanted to be green since they would have less chances to win the game.

Design Your Own Spinner

Choose a card with an instruction and make the spinner match the card.

Make a spinner that is unfair.

Make a spinner that is fair.

Make a spinner that is unlikely to land on blue.

Make a spinner that is equally likely to land on red and green.

Make a spinner that is more likely to land on green, least likely to land on red, but possible to land on blue.

'My card said more liklely to be yellow.'

Snowman Probability Game

Spin the spinner and add the part of the snowman

indicated on the spinner.  Whoever builds their whole snowman

first wins the game.

3-D FUN!

After learning the names of the solids, we decided to play a game

where one person builds a structure and hides it.  Then they try to explain

to their partner how to rebuild the very same structure.  Language like next 

to, to the left, to the right, stack it, under, on top, etc. was needed

to be able to describe the structure, as well as using the names

of the solids.

'...finally put a blue cube on top of each of the standing 

rectangular prisms...'

'close your eyes while I build...'

'...look, there's two rectangle prisms and a square prism...'

'The cylinder is at the back behind the prisms...'

Lots of great math language being used!!