Today we began our bell work, mentor sentences. The goals of mentor sentences:
- understand the structure of sentences
- write descriptive sentences
- become better readers and writers
The week begins with a sentence from a shared book. This week the sentence was from "First Day Jitters".
Day 1: Write down what you notice about the sentence.
Day 2: Rewrite the mentor sentence labeling all the parts of speech.
Day 3: Revise the mentor sentence my making it more descriptive or exciting
Day 4: Imitate the mentor sentence by keeping the style and structure the same, but making it your own.
This week's mentor sentence:
Sarah's hands were cold and clammy.
This is what we noticed:
- descriptive adjectives
- simple sentence that ends with a period
- proper noun with capital letter
- apostrophe showing possession
We have discussed two before reading strategies:
Predicting and Activating Your Schema.
Predicting is a before, during and after reading strategy!
What is your schema?
How do these strategies help you understand what you are reading?
Share with a parent the story "The Name Jar". What do you think the message of the story is?
Math
We began number talks today. We discussed an important property of ADDITION. We can decompose a number to make a magic ten or friendly number.
When we DECOMPOSE a number we break into into parts.
For example:
27 + 6 = ?
If we decompose 6 into 3 + 3 we can use one 3 and add it to the 27 to make a magic ten of 30. So.... 27 + 6 = 30 + 3 = 33
Some students like to think of this as give and take. You add 3 to 27 and subtract 3 from 6.
We can also look in the ones place to find magic tens.
For example:
26 + 54 = ?
6 ones + 4 ones = 10
20 + 50 = 70
70 + 10 = 80
Remember this is mental math so you are doing all these calculations in your head.
Try these:
58 + 7
43 + 9
26 + 8
A little harder....
48 + 19
28 + 42
17 + 68
The classroom rule we are trying to follow is changing tasks quickly and quietly.
Reminders:
- "All About You" sheet filled out by a parent
- Gym clothes
- Small object that says something about you
- Book for silent reading
- Money for agenda (payment may be made online)
