Jonathan was instructed to repaint the white portion of his platform, repaint the blue portion, and the red and black accents. As his work was drying we discussed again the canvas project that he chose. We went over the characters and background so that we could begin in our new class.
We are learning the words to the song in order to prepare his pantomime. We listened to the song several times. Jonathan created several movements to match up with several of the lines. I wrote down the movements so that we wouldn't forget. We also watched the animated version to see if that would give us more ideas for hand movements. I also talked to Jonathan about performing his pantomime for the talent show on March 12th.
This morning we started with the daily language review, which focused on contractions. We enjoyed reading four chapters of our novel study, Dinosaurs Before Dark. We read about their encounter with the T-Rex and how they got away! We worked through our reader’s response journal with some written and some verbal responses. Next, we worked through a long-vowel pattern word sort (13) which focused on words such as black, space, and brain. (Short a CVC, long a CVC+e, and long a CVVC). Once Jonathan got going on the task, he did a nice job. He was able to identify the two “oddball” words and the two sets of homophones. Finally, in honor of Fun Friday, we played a fun game called Pirate’s Treasure. This educational board game focused on context clues. With the task cards we either examined the underlined target word or provided the missing word in the sentence based on meaning in the context of the short paragraph.
Jonathan discussed the properties of a wheel, and was asked to imagine moving a shopping cart without wheels. Through his responses, Jonathan demonstrated that he understood that less force would need to be extended to move something that has wheels. Jonathan read about force, energy, push and pull, and we reviewed their definitions. He worked on learning exercises in his Science Student Practice book, and worked well independently. We then examined our experiment comparing kernels of popcorn. Jonathan was encouraged to observe the differences in the popped kernels and unpopped kernels, and he explained that he observed differences in color. We will see if there are any additional changes noted after the weekend.
Jonathan worked on problems tasking him with subtracting numbers within 20. We reviewed strategies including counters to count on and backwards, making ten, decomposing a number, understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction, and creating equivalent but easier or known sums. We watched a video explaining subtraction using a variety of strategies in order to reinforce and consolidate emergent gains.
Language Arts: This morning we read a fun booklet entitled, Verbman Saves the Day! We read about how Verbman uses action verbs to defeat Couch Potato! Jonathan found verbs in the text and also completed a fill in the blank activity with verbs. Next, Jonathan practiced proper capitalization of names of places. We continued our discussion on identifying the narrator of a story in his iReady textbook. We used one of his source texts and read a few examples to make the determination that the narrator was the author. We enjoyed two chapters and follow up activities with our novel study, Dinosaurs Before Dark. On Reading Eggspress, Jonathan used the digital dictionary to look up the word “strange”. He was then tasked with putting the word in alphabetical order, identify its part of speech, and identify which sentence used the word correctly. He did this with “snatch” and “sailed” as well. He also learned about how authors use exclamation marks and question marks. He then interpreted statements to determine their meaning as well as practiced drawing conclusions. Finally, on this site, he worked to find the meanings of words using context clues. Religion: We continued our discussion of God’s love and forgiveness. We listened to and read the words for the song Children of God, which reminds us that we are children of God in one family. The song shares that sometimes we get it wrong but God forgives us every time. We tied forgiveness and coming back together again into the Sacrament of Penance and Reconciliation. We talked about ways to say we are sorry, ways to show we are sorry, and ways to forgive. Jonathan completed follow up activities in his book and scored 5/5 on his quiz for this chapter.
Jonathan chose to do a drawing of a toucan. He photocopied the picture.
He learned how to scribble on the back of the copy with a graphite pencil. Because of his hand injury today, I traced it onto a piece of Bristol paper.
Today's session began with Jonathan reflecting upon the strategy he would use to free a marble from an ice cube and melt it without touching the marble. Jonathan said he would use something to drop the ice cube in hot water to melt it. We then explored the mechanics of motion, or moving from one place to another, and Jonathan thought of examples that used motion. He also completed some activities requiring him to circle objects in motion in pictures. We ended the session adding and defining the new vocabulary words, 'force,' 'pull,' and 'push' to our scientific language repertoire, and Jonathan provided examples of each.
Jonathan continued to work on improving his ability to fluently subtract and write facts using number bonds and number sentences. He is also improving his familiarity with decomposing numbers, organizing facts in number bonds, and understanding the relationship between addition and subtraction through solving problems using different strategies. While working on problems, Jonathan has also begun to improve his ability to understand and apply inverse operations with greater fluency.
