Yay for Luis! He is our next VIP!!!

Luis was super excited when he was chosen as our next VIP!! Can't wait to see how he and Andy have some fun!

Daniela's Week as VIP!

Wow! Daniela had a great week as VIP!  She loves to share her likes and dislikes with the class.  It sounds like she and Andy had a great time with her cousin who was visiting from Mexico.  She enjoyed sharing her favorite book and her ME sack.  We learned that her family is VERY important to her.  She loves spending time with her parents and siblings!  Stay tuned to read about how much Daniela enjoyed her week!

This week's learning goals!

In Math, not only are we analyzing strategies to check for efficiency, but we are also looking at strategies to see where there are mistakes.  This helps us learn how to analyze our own work.

We are also reviewing because next week is...GALILEO!

Get some practice here:

Multiplication and Division

Problem Solving and Word Problems

Number Patterns

Factors





In Reading, we are learning how to use various reference sources!  Atlases, almanacs, dictionaries, thesauri, and the ever so popular, internet!

Here are some GREAT sites to help us practice!

Dictionary Practice


Atlas Fun!

Using a thesaurus!

We're Bloggers! Can you dig it?

Here we are! We are officially bloggers!  Every student in The Hive has their own blog.  

 I will link a blog or to a week on  here so you can also see what these busy bees are blogging about! 

I'm excited for them to have another outlet for their writing and creativity.  

Stay tuned!

Math. Friend or foe?

Hello ladies and gents!  Miss Maya here to ask you the age old question....MATH.  Is it your friend? Is it your foe?  Why do you like it?  Why are you not a fan of it?  What is your biggest success? What do you need to work on?  Answer in a comment below and be sure to add your first name only!

My Week as VIP! By: Nicholas

This week was fun, but now it is done. I experienced lots of fun throughout the week. My weekend with Andy was awesome! Andy and I went to breakfast at the Big Apple. The food there was tasty. 

Andy also got the chance to meet some of my friends at a birthday party. 

Then we went to a softball tournament and won the trophy. At school the following week I felt important being the VIP. I had fun telling the class about me. It was cool showing everyone what I care about in the me sack. I liked showing my favorite book, 150 Amazing Animals. But what made me feel the most special and I liked the most was eating lunch and hanging out with my dad. This week was totally awesome! 

Learning Goals for this week

In reading we will be working hard on building our comprehension by using a variety of reading strategies like drawing conclusions, determining cause and effect, making inferences, and sequencing events.  

When we draw conclusions, we are able to use the information in the text and information from our own life 
experiences. 

Determining cause and effect allows us to see how and why things happen in a text. We can ask "What happened?" and "Why did that happen?" to determine the cause and effect of a specific event.

To better help us understand a text, we can also make sure events are put in order, or sequenced.  Many times, we use ordinal words such as, first, next, then, last, etc.  

Below are some sites that will help you practice these reading comprehension reading strategies. 

Making Inferences Practice

Cause and Effect Practice

Sequencing Practice

Reading Comprehension Strategies Practice/Drawing Conclusions


In Math, we will be creating and solving one step equations that can be solved using addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of whole numbers.  

Equations can be used to help us understand CGI (word problems) and allow us to solve them more efficiently.    We use variables (letters or symbols) to represent what is unknown n the problem.  

Equations Practice

Advanced Equations Practice

The secret is out!! Our very first Mystery Reader!

How exciting! José was very excited when he saw his mom and little brother walk in to be our very first Mystery Reader! She read "Mi Propio Cuartito" (My Very Own Room) in Spanish. Even our friends who didn't speak Spanish enjoyed the story. If you would like to be a Mystery Reader in The Hive, please email or call Miss Maya...but keep it a secret!

Thank you y Muchisimas Gracias to Sra. Mitchel for joining us today!!

Whew...what a week for our VIP!

Nicholas had a great time (check out his post for all that he did).  

Nicholas did a great job on his About Me Page and sharing it with the class.

We loved hearing about all the things he put in his "ME sack" and what they mean to him.

On Wednesday, Nicholas shared his favorite book with us.  You can tell he really likes to learn about the sea.

Thursday, Nicholas shared his Adventures with Andy (and Vader!)

Friday, Nicholas was super excited to have his dad join him for lunch!  Dad was nice enough to bring him some lunch! I'm sure he felt super special!

It was great getting to know you Nicholas! Hope you had a great time! 

This Week's BUZZZZ...our learning goals are...

A brand new week brings brand new goals.  The kids and I had a great time learning about figurative language last week.  We will continue reviewing our past learning goals by applying the use of figurative language in our writing and identifying them in our reading.


This week in Reading:

We will be reading various texts like fables, folktales, fairytales, and legends to identify the moral of a literary selection. 

Vocabulary

• moral-the lesson of a story
• example: Slow and steady wins the race.  The lesson learned from this moral, found in The Tortoise and the Hare, is that just because you are fast, doesn't always mean you will win.  Take your time.

 We will also be looking at mythology to determine the meanings of words and phrases as they are used to refer to characters in those texts.

• examples:  When someone says, "He has Herculean strength!" refers to the mythological character of Hercules.  Hercules was known for his strength.  

In order to understand what these mean, we will be looking at different myths and their characters and how we often use the character's traits to describe things in our every day lives. 

Here is a site that can help you practice this week's learning goals at home:

Reading Practice!

This week in Math:

Whose property is it anyway?  

In order to solve multiplication and division problems, we need to understand some mathematical properties.  This week we will be defining and understanding the Associative and Distributive properties.  Last week, we used several different strategies to solve multiplication.  This week, we will break down those strategies and really understand how and why they work.  We will begin by creating conjectures (rules) to prove and disprove each property.

Examples:

• Associative Property of Addition and Multiplication
• No matter which numbers you associate (group) together in an addition or multiplication problem, you will achieve the same sum or product.
• (6 + 3) + 2 = 6 + (3+2)---if you notice that in the first half of the equation, the 6 and the 3 are associated and in the second half of the equation, the 3 and the 2 are associated  you till get the sum of 11 when you add each side of the equation
• This also works for multiplication: (5 x 2) x 5 = 5 x (2 x 5) 
• you still get the same product of 50 when you multiply each side of the equation

• Distributive Property of Multiplication
• When using the distributive property, you can decompose (take apart) numbers by place value and then "distribute" those numbers to the rest of the problem
• Example: You can have a problem like 23 x 19
• Decompose the 19 into a 10 and a 9 and then you multiply the 10 and the 9 by 23
• 23 x 19 = (23 x 10) + (23 x 9) 

Math Practice

More!

In Writing, we will continue to focus on sentence fluency by using all of the different types of sentences (delcarative, exclamatory, interrogative, and imperative) in our writing.  We will also be learning about simple, complex, and compound sentences.  This will help our writing become more appealing to our audiences.  

Stay tuned:  kids are working on Simile stories! 

Social Studies will continue to be incorporated on a daily basis into our Literacy block.  By reading more non-fiction text, we continue to prepare ourselves for middle school, high school, and college.  

Science:  We get to start learning about Magnetism and Electricity this week!  We will begin with an investigation into magnetism!  I'm sure you will hear all about it! Keep checking in to see the Scientists in room 31 investigating!!

                         

My week as VIP and my Adventure with Andy! By: Kylie! (Guest Blogger!)

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I am Kylie and I was our first V.I.P of the year! Iwent to the mall with Andy.  Wechose an awesome skirt together. It is long and is brownish with white polka dots.  I felt great when I put it on for thefirst time. We did the same every day only we were also shopping for differentkinds of non-gender specific baby clothes for my friend’s baby.  We had lots of fun!  I felt like Andy was really alive thewhole time.

Introducing our next VIP!!

Meet Nicholas!!!  Nicholas was very excited this morning when he was chosen as our next VIP!  When asked what he was most excited about for next week, he said, “EVERYTHING!”  Stay tuned for all of the adventures that Nicholas is going to take Andy on!  He will be our guest author on our blog next week!

Wishing Andy and Nicholas a very fun weekend together…hmmm I hope Nicholas’ dog Vader, gets along well with Andy!  Vader is a Great Dane and we all know Great Danes are HUGE dogs! 

Take some TIME and get to know the busy bees of The Hive!

This afternoon, we were finally able to create our glyphs for the month of September!  I searched far and wide for a fun, new glyph and my search ended on MathWire.com!  I found a "Watch Glyph"

Ok, so maybe you are wondering what a glyph is?  Well, a glyph is a pictorial representation of information that the students are asked for.  We can use glyphs to collect data, form collaborative groups, learn about one another, and just have fun!

Here is the key to this month's glyph:

Do you have some TIME to tell meabout yourself?

Strap edges = age

straight = 8

wavy = 9

jagged = 10

toothed = over 10

Strap color = hair color

Holes in strap = number in family

Face shape = favorite subject

round = Math

triangular = Social Studies

trapezoidal = Science

rectangular = Literacy

Face color = house pets

green = fish

purple = birds

red = dogs

blue = cats

orange = hamsters

yellow = no pets

white = other pets

Hands = birthdate

hour hand = month

minute hand = day

(for example, June 4th would be 6:04)

Hand colors = eye color

Numerals gender

Arabic (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, ...) = male

Roman (I, II, III, IV, V, ...) =female

Take a look at what it looks like when we are creating our glyphs...and the finished products will be posted soon!  Thanks for stopping by! 

What are we Buzzzzzzin’ about this week? Our learning goals are…

In Math, we will be working on the following standards:

1.  Use multiple strategies to multiply whole numbers

2.  Multiply a whole number of up to 4 digits by a 1 digit whole number, and multiply two 2-digit numbers, using strategies based on place value and the properties operations. Illustrate and explain the calculation by using equations, rectangular arrays, and/or area models.

So…we will be focusing a lot on how to multiply numbers using our most efficient strategies.  The kiddos will be introduced to our rubric that we use to evaluate just how efficient our strategies are.  Keep in mind when you are solving multiplication problems that there is more than one way to solve!  This week we will be reviewing various strategies and using our number sense to decompose numbers by using our prior knowledge (factors and multiples) to help us.  You can use array cards, equations, and even draw pictures to help you explain your thinking and make your understanding even deeper.

Remember, it is very important that we know our multiplication facts!  Make sure they are being practiced nightly for at least 10-15 minutes.  If you need flash cards, they can be found in the dollar bins at Target or even at Dollar Tree.  If you are unable to locate any, just let me know and I can print some out for you!

Here are some links to help you practice at home (You can also just write some multiplication problems and refer to your rubric to help you evaluate your strategy!)  I will post the rubric on our school website for you to use at home.

Multiplication Practice

More practice and FUN!

In Reading we will be focusing on the following learning goal:

Identify figurative language, including similies, personification, and

Idioms

Figurative language is a great way to make your writing more entertaining for your reader! It also helps make any story you are reading more interesting.

Figurative language paints a picture in your reader’s mind. 

Vocabulary:

Similie:  comparing 2 things using like or as

         Example:  He ran around the track as fast as a cheetah.

                  Her eyes were bright like the sun.

Personification:  giving human like characteristics to non-human objects

Example:  The pen danced across the paper as she wrote her poem.

Idiom:  a figure of speech used to give the reader an idea without using literal meaning

         Example:  It was raining cats and dogs. 

Here is some practice!

Figurative Language Practice

More!!!

Have fun and let's have another great week!