We were testing the temperature of water and learning about how to read a thermometer. On a thermometer, teh degrees are marked in increments of 20, so we needed to remember what was half way inbetween 20 and 40, 40 and 60, 60 and 80, 80 and 100, 100 and 120. We saw that if the water was warmer, the red line inside the thermometer went up and reached a higher number. this is interesting because on our 110 charts, you read "down by 10s" to get to a higher number. 

We compared the water temperature to find a "just right bath water for a baby" which is just under 100 degrees F. We realized that putting a clump of snow into the water brought the temperature down-sometimes by too much! Ms. Atwood had an instant read thermometer that had a digital read out and we double checked the water temperature. We used the language of "What is the difference between 80 degrees and 50 degrees?" --which is subtraction!

Next we realized that a thermometer is really like a number line if you turn it on its side. All of sudden we are using a number line to add and subtract two digit number and we feel really proud of ourselves! We measured the water temperature in cup A, and then the water temperature in cup B. We say "What is the difference in termperature between cup A and cup B" because you don't know if the water is warmer or colder in cup A. 110 degrees was too hot for a baby bath.

We have been having fun with our poetry unit! We have viewed the world through the eyes of a poet. A poem tells a story, appeals to our feelings  and senses and describes. Reading poems make us look at the world in a new way and wehn we read poems we find the music in the words.We reallu like writing Acrostic Poems, Color Poems and Haiku Poems.


Fish
Food floating all around
Inches away
Swimming happily
Happy lives!

Green
Green looks like grass
Green sounds like frogs
Green smells like avacado
Green tastes like broccoli
Green feels like a turtle

Soccer
To the goal you go
Running so fast, feet on fire
​Goalie catching balls

We wrapped up our  non-fiction reading unit by being Experts that Grow Knowledge across Books. We gathered in groups to create a presentation on a topic. After we created our posters, we practiced our presentations. We used our voices to emphasoze keywords and didn't speak too fast. Our audience was mesmerized by our presentations!

Our task was to prevent the red houses from moving when we poured 500ml of water on the model. We learned a lot about how to prevent the houses from moving (left model) and how much they can move (right model). 

Room 8 wrote cards to our Veterans. Some of the children wrote to a family member. The children thanked the veterans for their service to our country. "Dear Veterans, Thank you for serving our country. And sacrificing by being away from your family." "Thank you Pop, for saving our lives from the bad people. I am glad that you did it. And thank you for sacrificing fr u and our people and staying away from your family so we could survive fromt he bad people who wanted to win the war." 
Thank you to all who served and who continue to serve!

We wondered how many students were at Burr. We represented each class of 17 with a ten block and seven ones. Then we grouped up the ones in groups of ten and traded them in for a ten block. Then we traded  in the ten blocks for a hundreds block. The first time we tried, we were not paying attention and ended up with an extra hundred block--oops--we used persistance and we tried again! This time we paid attention to our precision  and got 278 students. Next we looked up the answer on the Burr Website. We used what we know about reading non-fiction to look for the headings on a page. We found the heading AND we found a label in bold face with a colon after it, which means "Pay Attention! I am going to give you  imprtant information!" 

After we confirmed the answer for the number of students at Burr, we were curious about the other elementary school. Back to the websites! We made a graph of how many students were in each elementary school and put our answers on a number line. It is weird to have a number line start at 190! Next we had to answer how many more students were at Burr than at Haddam. We used a variety of tools to figure out the answer. Using the number line was one way to think about the problem!

The children are diving right into being flexible and persistent when faced with tricky lingo!

We went on a hike in the woods of Burr School. We walked over a bunch of bridges. We were looking for signs of erosion. Erosion is when the earth gets worn down. We saw a broken tree and Brian caught a frog!

Today we learned about erosion. Erosion is the name that scientists give to  wht way in which water, ice, wind and sun wear away at Earth's surface and change the shape of the land. We read the book Cracking up. A  Story About Erosion by Jacqui Bailey and Mathew Lilly. We will sepnd some more time exploring this book! 

We are really working hard on our fact fluency!  We love to move our desks around so we are all by ourselves when we race the clock.