Today, Oliver and I worked on the differences between the units of Fahrenheit and Celsius, both of which are used to measure temperatures. I explained to Oliver how to convert from Celsius into Fahrenheit using the relationship (*F = *C x 1.8 + 32). Oliver was able to understand how Celsius is based on the boiling temperature and freezing temperature of pure water. Oliver was able to convert between temperature units and add and subtract one temperature from another.
Today, Oliver and I began a discussion of time and ways we can measure time. We spoke about adding and subtracting a time of day from another time of day. Oliver had a good understanding of ways to convert from one unit of time (minute, second, hour, day, century, etc..) to another unit. Together Oliver and I found out how many seconds are in a leap year and roughly how many seconds are in one millennium. Oliver and I worked through a number of problems in the text including how to convert units and finding out which unit of time was larger.
Oliver began his session by printing, mounting, and assembling his final 5 Senses project. He mounted the essay and a photo of his ear on blue paper and hung it on his classroom wall. Oliver was very proud of his completed project. He then moved on to writing about The Big Day. His piece was about the PowerPoint presentation that he was planning on giving to the school at lunchtime. Oliver was dressed in his costume and wanted to be "in character" for his writing. During the writing, we worked on punctuation, capitalization, and supporting details. After the writing, we transitioned to reviewing Oliver' s reading comprehension homework. He had some difficulties answering the short response questions, so we worked on adding details from the story to answer them completely. The story touched on the Korean War and Oliver had a few questions about the way that the war ended. He was fortunate enough to have our resident historian, Mr. Walt, come into class and quickly answer how the war ended.
Oliver worked on editing and revising his 5 Senses hearing essay to the final product. Once Oliver felt like the writing was complete - we discussed the importance of reading through the piece several times more. During this reading, it is important to check for spelling, punctuation, verb tense agreement, grammatical errors, and capitalization. Oliver found a couple mistakes and was quite proud of his editing skills. Next, we continued to work on the theme task cards that Oliver had been focusing on. We only had enough time for him to read a few comprehension theme cards and determined the appropriate theme for each.
Oliver began his session with a PowerPoint mystery presentation called, The Mystery of the Missing Mascot. This activity is used to develop inferencing, drawing conclusions and critical thinking skills. The mystery begins with a scenario where the Brookhaven Boar's mascot is stolen right before the big game. Oliver read about the 4 different suspects and used facts provided in the PowerPoint to determine who stole the mascot. He took notes while reading and focused on extracting the most important details to help solve the mystery. In addition to critical thinking, inferencing, and drawing conclusions, Oliver also had to apply his math knowledge of time to help find the culprit. Oliver did an outstanding job on this difficult project and had fun doing it. We then transitioned to a theme reading activity. Oliver read comprehension theme cards and determined the appropriate theme for each. He worked very hard on this activity and is really showing progress with the concept of theme.
