The Shooting Shark Stars have been super busy learning.

During reader's workshop our focus has been learning about the differences between fiction and nonfiction.  We have talked about fiction being a made up story from the author's brain and nonfiction being full of facts.  We have sorted our classroom books, books from our book bags, and pictures of books from extra book orders.   While reading with your child discuss whether the book is fiction or nonfiction and why.

During writer's workshop, writers have been busy writing how-to-books.  Each student is publishing a how-to poster.  The posters will be hanging in the hallway when they are complete.  Next week we will begin persuasive writing. I cannot wait to see what the children try to convince us of.  Don't be surprised if you get a letter full of reasons why you should get a pet or a list of reasons why your child should be able to eat cookies for breakfast. 

During math time we have learned about the importance of a standard measurement. We measured objects around the classroom using our feet and realized that two people could measure the same thing and get different lengths. So we measured again using standard feet.

To reinforce this concept we read How Big is a Foot.  In this book the king uses his feet to measure how big the queen's bed needs to be.  But when the apprentice builds the bed he uses his feet.  The bed was much to small.  Finally they solve the problem by making a sculpture of the kings foot to use as the standard measurement tool.

After reading we made two "beds."  First, we used our feet and pretended they were the apprentices feet.  Then we used a standard foot and pretended they were the kings feet.  There was a big difference.

Today students wrote survey questions and collected data from their classmates.  Tomorrow they will turn the data into graphs and analyze them.

Remember no school this Friday.  It is a teacher inservice day!