We listened to a digital version of 'Miss Rumphius' and Gracyn completed an assessment of fiction genre characteristics. Great job! She added an illustration to the problem page in her narrative and wrote another sentence embellishing the problem. Word study was built into her writing.

Our lesson continued with how to use graphs to show data. Today, we focused on how to interpret data from a picture graph. Gracyn was given different picture graph examples and answered correlating questions to the given data. Then, Gracyn cut out mixed addition and subtraction sentences, solved the equations, and glued them into the correct true or false column.

Gracyn and I learned about our two new states - North Dakota and North Carolina. We looked at maps and reviewed, locating border states and discussing different climates. We read in the text to learn about crops, climate and natural resources. We looked at a Food Road Trip Across the USA to see what states are associated with certain foods. We looked at the map of Foods in the U.S. and looked at continents and border states. Finally, we looked in Gracyn's wallet (the one we made in a previous class) to learn more about money.

Gracyn and I discussed why we collect data and how tally marks help to keep track of the data gathered. To gain hands on experience, Gracyn took two surveys to collect and record data from the other students. What is your favorite indoor game and what is your favorite pet are the two questions she asked. Once she had the data, she answered questions pertaining to the results.

Gracyn and I began by reading Good Night, Little Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister. To correlate with the book, we made hand print fish puppets. Gracyn chose turquoise and white polka dot cardstock to trace her hand print. She carefully cut out the hand which I then hot glued to a large popsicle stick. Gracyn used colorful rhinestones and spangles to decorate her rainbow fish along with large google eyes and painted on pink lips.

We read the story "You Can Be A Friend" for a second time. Noticing with this reading that the illustrations looked just like the authors. When we read about the authors we learned that they are a former NFL player/coach and his wife. Gracyn read 'Olivia Wants to be a Vet' once more, continuing to work on the pacing aspect of fluency. I assessed her word study and encoding skills today, she has progressed from the alphabetic stage to the within word stage, working on common long vowels. I am very pleased with her progress. She added three sentences to the problem section of her story.

We went to the library to select books for the week, she made some good choices for her guided reading books. Next, we finished the Amber Brown story we've been reading and talked about the lesson in
the story. Gracyn also gave her opinion of the book with reasons for her thinking. Word work was syllables, open, closed and silent e.

Gracyn and I read a book about friendship for our read aloud, our strategy focus was determining the author's message to the reader. She read her Olivia story again for fluency practice. Our word study today was silent e syllable words. We continued working on her first draft of her fictional narrative.

After spending some time stretching, Gracyn and I spent a lot of time today working on her front and back walkovers. She is determined to get them and she is getting stronger and stronger and closer and closer. We also worked on some skills on the beam and some strengthening drills. It was a great session!

Gracyn continued the unit on living things today. She read a chapter in her science book about plants and parts of a plant. We reviewed roots, stems, leaves, seeds, and flowers and their functions on a plant. We went outside and observed plants and trees. We looked at the mangoes growing on the tree we observed a few weeks ago and discussed how much they have grown. We found a pinecone at the park and covered it in peanut butter and birdseed to make a bird feeder. She hung it up in the back of the school to feed the birds.