Sharing our Science Learning

We have been learning a lot about physical science, which is our first science unit. In between experiments, we have been working on some projects all about what we have learned. Creating projects is a great way for us to take what we're learning and create something special to share.

Our first science unit was about force and motion and simple machines. As part of the unit, we created slide shows about the Six Simple Machines. This was our first experience creating a slide show and they turned out great. Here are some below!













We are currently learning about the many different aspects of light. We have been reading nonfiction text about the characteristics of light. Taking what we are reading and putting it in our own words helps us understand these new concepts. It is also a good way to practice correct paragraph form.

We did this with the app Write About This. Here is an example by Claire and Kiersten.

Today we investigated the question of what happens when light hits a surface. We formed a hypothesis of what would happen when light hit different types of surfaces. We then got out flashlights to check to see if our hypothesis was correct.

The photos are dark, because we turned the lights off so we could concentrate on the light from our flashlights. Hopefully you can see how much fun we were having!

 

When we finished we looked to see if what we observed in our investigation supported our hypothesis. We had a great discussion about how light reflects off objects.

There are so many interesting categories of science. Mrs. Essenburg's favorite science topic is learning about rocks and minerals. What is your favorite science topic? We would love to hear about it!

All About Adjectives

We are always looking for ways to make our writing more interesting and fun to read. We want to be able to paint a picture with words for our readers.

One way to do that is to add interesting adjectives to our writing.

But what is an adjective?

An adjective is a word that describes a noun.  

Adjectives make writing more interesting and help the reader see what we are writing about. For example, which of these sentences paints a clearer picture in your mind?

The cat ran up the tree.

The drenched, terrified, yowling cat scurried up the wide, dark trunk of the tree.

The second sentence has adjectives that tell us a lot more about what is going on. It makes us want to know more!

We used the app Pic Collage to practice using adjectives. We chose a noun and thought of adjectives to describe that noun. Below are some of the Pic Collages we made.

 

Here are some adjectives by Tessa and Gavin describing the noun puppy.

 

Ruby and Jocelyn found some adjectives to describe the noun monkey.

 

Sara Jean, Kaiya, and Claire found adjectives to describe the noun unicorn.

 

Jaelyn, Ryan, and Kaydance found adjectives to describe the noun castle.

 

Jack and Kayla found adjectives to describe the noun tiger.

Some of us even had time to do a second activity using the app Chatter Pix. This app is a lot of fun and a fun way to learn about grammar!

Here is the Chatterpix that Conner and Ryan created about adjectives.



Here is the ChatterPix that Sara Jean and Jaelyn created using adjectives.

Check back for more ChatterPixes using adjectives!

Now that we have a good beginning understanding of adjectives, the next step is to be sure we use them in our writing.

Adjectives help our writing come alive and help to paint a picture in the reader's mind. Choose a sentence below and add some adjectives in the comment section to make it more interesting!

The boy walked into the forest.

The bird soared through the sky.

The car drove down the highway.

The dog barked at the girl.

Author's Purpose

One of the most important things to remember about reading is that Reading is Thinking!

One way to always think when we read is to try to determine what the Author's Purpose was in writing the story. We can look for clues in the story to help us decide what the main purpose the author had in mind while writing.

There are three main purposes for writing a selection, and those can be summed up by the word PIE.

P -- Persuade

I-- Inform

E-- Entertain

To help explain it further, take a look at this video that some of my students made!




In order to make sure we understood Author's Purpose, we became authors! We made short books using the Book Creator app and iMovie on the iPad. 

Each short book needed to have one page where we tried to persuade the reader, another page where we informed the reader about something, and one page where we did our best to entertain.

Check out our books about Author's Purpose below.

Here is a video from Jocelyn, Sophie, and Bradyn.

Claire and Lexi's video.

This is by Tessa and Conner.

Jaelyn and Anthony want you to try to figure out the Author's Purpose on your own.

This one is by Deven and Gavin

This one is by Hope and Kiersten

If you are figuring out the author's purpose, that means you are thinking about what you are reading. It is so important to always stop and think as you read your book.

My favorite book ever is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. 

The purpose of that book is to entertain. I know that is the purpose because I loved that book so much I read it over and over. 

What is your favorite book? What do you think the Author's Purpose might be? How do you know? We would love to hear about it in the comment section below.

Investigating Area

It's great to be back after the Holiday Break, and in Room 15 we started back in math investigating area.

What is area? Here is a definition from the website Math is Fun.

To begin our investigation we read the book Grandfather Tang's Story. This is a story that introduces the idea of tangrams, which are seven different shapes (triangles, parallelograms, squares) that are used to create other shapes. 

 We experimented with these shapes to create different pictures. Even though the pictures were different, they all covered the same amount of space!

 

 

Next, we switched from tangrams to using tiles to find the area of figures. We discussed why it might better to use something like tiles to find the area instead of tangrams. We looked at three different figures that were close to the same size. We estimated which figure might have the greatest area, and then we used tiles to fill in the space inside to see if our estimations were correct.

 

 

Our next investigation into area was working with rectangles. If we have a rectangle with an area of 12 tiles, what would it look like? We worked together and discovered that there are lots of different rectangles we can make that have the same area. We used Skitch and ShowMe to share what we discovered.

We are off to a great start learning about area!

Math is all around us and we use area in our day-to-day lives often. We would love to hear some examples of how you might have used area in the past. Please share in comments below!