Letter X and Letter W

Letter X week

This was a note we got from the 5th grade student council before we took our IRI. They also brought us gummy fish for a little treat. I thought it was pretty sweet! 

We made x-rays of our hands and arm for our X art project. It was fun to talk about how they were to look like their bones. 

We did a following directions activity as well as directional words ( next to, above, below, etc.) they got to place all the x's in the spots that fit the directions. 

We have been working on sorting shapes in to 2-d and 3-d categories. Here is an example. 

This art project worked off our discussion of circles. They painted the circles and then used watercolor in between the circle lines. They turned out beautifully.

Here is a class picture from our jog-a-thon. The kids ran so hard and were such troopers. Thanks to all the family volunteers we had to help punch lap cards and get water. It was a really fun time!

Letter W week

For letter W we made wild flower artwork. We looked at some examples and talked about what the stems look like and what makes them wild flowers. I think they did a wonderful job. 

For our living and non-living unit we talked about cats. We looked at a real cat versus a stuffed animal cat. Then we filled in information about both cats. This helped them to see the characteristics of living things, which we also reviewed at the end of the lesson. 

We did a fun shape hunt on the ipads. Each student got to find one 2-d shape in the room and one 3-d shape in the room. Then they got to take a picture of their item and record their voice telling about their shape. They did such a great job, We did have to talk about how to use the new program, but most of them picked up on it very quickly!

Below are a few examples of the videos the students each made! This is my first time posting videos so I hope they work well!

For our W sight words books, the students got to write all the sentences by themselves! We thought up a W word that could go on each page and talked about some example sentences. Then they wrote the sentence and drew the picture all by themselves. I was so impressed. Below are some examples. 

The one below says the water is flowing. 

I'm sorry about the sideways picture! We talked a lot about the earth on earth day. We talked about the ways we could help our earth and take care of it. They thought of cleaning up trash, recycling, turning off the lights and planting trees. 

For math we did an activity to show how you can use shapes to create new shapes. Their goal was to start with a hexagon and see the different shapes they could use to make a hexagon shape. They came up with many different ways! I showed all the ways I saw them building them up on the board so people could see ways different than theirs. 

We also made shapes with our bodies this week! We talked about how their bodies would be the lines and I gave them some shapes to see if they could create those shapes with their bodies. The ones not making the shapes were looking at the shape to see if it might need to be moved or if it didn't look right.  

Above is a square and below is a triangle. We made other shapes but I forgot to get pictures! The rectangle was my favorite because they had to figure out how they would have long and short sides. Some groups used their bodies for long sides and their arms for short sides. Some groups the students curled up small for the short sides and laid down  for the long sides. It was great to see their problem solving skills at work.

We studied an artist named Kandinsky. They loved his artwork! We looked at some examples to see what they noticed. They decided he liked to use shapes and lines with lots of colors. We looked at many different examples to see if that was true for all his work.  Below is one of his works of art. Then the students created their own Kandinsky art and they turned out wonderful! I told them they looked like mini Kandinskys and they asked if they could meet the artist! I told them he was born over a hundred years ago so he wasn't around anymore. 

I gave the students a challenge in journal writing. I said a lot of them were getting comfortable with writing one sentence, did they think they could write two? A lot of them wanted to take on my challenge and they did a great job. They are becoming great writers!

To end the week we read Where the Wild Things Are. The students then worked with a partner at their table to re-tell a part of the story. Each table had a beginning, middle, and end. They drew a picture and wrote a sentence about that part of the story. At the end of the day, each table came up and shared their parts with the class. They all did a wonderful job. I was so impressed how well they worked together in a group and listened to each other's ideas!

Here  they are working together.