A Busy Monday

In writing, we've been working on holding peer conferences and then editing our essays. I've been paring up students randomly. Then they trade papers and read each other's essays. On post-its they have to write two compliments and two suggestions for improvement. After sharing their ideas with their partner they edit their own writing. Sometimes we do it again with different partners and only one compliment and one improvement. Then they finally turn them in to me and I check over and conference with students as well. It's taken a lot of practice, but now our peer conferences are running like a well-oiled machine! (See my post on figurative language below! Haha!) The conversations I'm overhearing are wonderful and I think they're really learning from each other. (Here's hoping!)

In science, we've been learning about measuring mass and volume. Students experimented using a balance to find the mass of a whole object. Then they broke the object apart and found the mass of the pieces. After finding the sum of the masses they compared it the mass of the whole and found that they were equal. Many had predicted that it would change, so it was good to find out the answer firsthand. Students also measured volume by measuring how much water was displaced in a graduated cylinder filled with 30 mL of water after adding an object.  

After lunch I walk down to the Kindergarten building and pull my first grade math students from their K/1 combo class. Lately, we've been working on reading and interpreting data from graphs. All my students agree their favorite kind is picture graphs... just because they like drawing smiley faces or "stars" for each vote. I was surprised by how quickly they caught on to tally charts and the group of 5. Today we looked at bar graphs though using the bar graph center from my TpT store. I didn't have time to print and laminate the graph cards, so I just printed the response sheet and we looked at the graphs on my laptop screen. I think my class liked it more this way and I saved on color ink! 

    

In reading, we finished our novel study on Stuart Little today. I don't think I'll be reading it with my class again next year... I wasn't in love with it. My students enjoyed it, but it didn't lead to the deep discussions I was hoping for. We're starting Island of the Blue Dolphins this week and I'm excited about this one! What novel studies have you tried?