Back to reality

I was out sick yesterday :( but hopefully your kiddo filled you in on the day's happenings.

Today, now that we are back from our break, we are back to reality and got right to work! In Math Workshop, we began our understanding of fractions by first discussing what we already know and looking ahead to what we are going to be learning and setting a goal for this unit. We actually had a pretty big number of kiddos that did really well on the pre-test so some set goals for using models and/or number lines to justify their thinking. Then, we reviewed ways to represent fractions and started doing some problem solving with sharing pizzas among different numbers of students. *Students have homework due Thursday to find and model fractions of their family!* After lunch, we read more from The Beaded Moccasins, and identified similes the author uses to help us visualize the comparisons. Then, we read independently and quite a few visited the library (since our sub yesterday was supposed to be the library sub :)). My focus is going to be on guided reading this week so students need to work more independently, so they worked on thinking critically about the paired texts in StoryWorks while I met with a couple groups where we focused today, mostly, on reading closely and understanding the story so we can answer questions about the story. In Writer's Workshop, we picked topics and began our pre-writing for our opinion essays. Finally, our day concluded with Social Studies and learning more about the mound builders and how they are alike and different from the prehistoric indians and hunter-gatherers.